An update on Swift

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An abstract from a recent talk by Ian Foster in Germany on Swift (we covered Swift for the first time in March):

A common pattern in scientific computing involves the execution of many tasks that are coupled only in the sense that the output of one may be passed as input to one or more others–for example, as a file, or via a Web Services invocation. While such “loosely coupled” computations can involve large amounts of computation and communication, the concerns of the programmer tend to be different than in traditional high performance computing, being focused on management issues relating to the large numbers of datasets and tasks–and often, the complexities inherent in “messy” data organizations–rather than the optimization of interprocessor communication.

…To address these concerns, we have developed Swift, a system that combines a novel scripting language called SwiftScript with a powerful runtime system based on Karajan and Falkon to allow for the concise specification, and reliable and efficient execution, of large loosely coupled computations.

The post on Ian’s blog contains a pointer to the presentation.