Cloud based tool offers ‘pay as you go’ C code parallelisation
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A 'cloud' based tool has been launched by start up Vector Fabrics, which claims the software can help users to parallelise sequential C code. The package, called vfAnalyst, highlights potential parallelisation opportunities, allowing multicore implementations to be be developed more quickly. CEO Mike Beunder, pictured, said: "Software technology has been lagging behind hardware and parallelisation of software is one of the biggest challenges. vfAnalyst shows users the best places for parallelisation."
Beunder added that, along with optimising code for parallelisation, vfAnalyst can show if the algorithm being coded is good enough. "It will show designers whether their application has the performance they are looking for."
Analysis is independent of hardware platform; the code is simply analysed using Vector Fabrics' proprietary technology. The software is accessed through a Flash interface, which is said to make it easier to identify those portions of code that could benefit from parallelism. Once these have been identified, the most promising candidates for partitioning are selected. Then the user has the opportunity to select those with the least cost.
Hosted on Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud, vfAnalyst is available on a pay as you go basis, with an introductory offer of €85 per month for unlimited use by one person.
Beunder said the service will be targeted at SMEs. "It will be good for companies who don't have a huge server farm and good for those who work on a project basis."
While vfAnalyst will assist in developing new code, it is also likely to be used by companies looking to rework legacy code for use on multicore platforms.
