Implicitly parallel languages place the burden of identifying, exploiting and managing parallelism upon the compiler and runtime system, rather than on the programmer. NIP is a runtime system for supporting implicitly parallel, object-oriented programming languages and is designed for scaleable distributed memory systems and shared memory multiprocessor systems.

NIP introduces novel concepts in the areas of lazy task creation and caching/locking for object-based distributed shared memory (references). It was originally implemented in C++ as a user-level library. The HiPPO visual, object-oriented programming language uses NIP as its runtime.

NIP.net is currently under development. It builds on the strengths of the first version and it is used to explore ideas in the area of garbage collection in an object-based distributed shared memory. It is written in C# and can run on both Microsoft's .NET framework and Ximian's Mono runtimes.

Contacts: Dr. Savas Parastatidis

Keywords: Implicitly parallel, runtime, object-oriented programming languages, lazy task creation, object-based distributed shared memory, clusters of computers, multiprocessors, shared memory, DSM.