Table of Contents

1. `TOP-C' Copying Conditions
2. Quick Start: Installation and Test Run
3. Overview of `TOP-C/C++'

3.1 Programmer's Model

3.1.1 Structure of a TOP-C Program
3.1.2 Four Callback Functions
3.1.3 Task Input and Task Output Buffers
3.1.4 The `TOP-C' Algorithm

3.2 Three Key Concepts for TOP-C
3.3 Distributed and Shared Memory Models

4. Writing `TOP-C' Applications

4.1 The Main TOP-C Library Calls
4.2 Callback Functions for TOPC_master_slave()
4.3 Actions Returned by CheckTaskResult()
4.4 TOP-C Utilities

5. Compiling and Invoking `TOP-C' Applications

5.1 Compiling TOP-C Applications
5.2 Command Line Options in TOP-C Applications
5.3 Invoking a TOP-C Application in Sequential Memory
5.4 Invoking a TOP-C Application in Distributed Memory

5.4.1 Writing Procgroup Files for `MPINU'
5.4.2 If Slaves Fail to Start

5.5 Invoking a TOP-C Application in Shared Memory

6. Debugging and Tracing

6.1 Debugging by Limiting the Parallelism
6.2 Debugging with `--TOPC-safety'
6.3 TOP-C and POSIX signals
6.4 Tracing Messages
6.5 Stepping Through a Slave Process with `gdb'
6.6 Segmentation faults and other memory problems

7. Performance and Long Jobs

7.1 Dropping Slow or Dead Slaves
7.2 Strategies for Greater Concurrency
7.3 Improving Performance
7.4 Long Jobs and Courtesy to Others

8. Advanced Features of `TOP-C'

8.1 Testing for Task Continuations and Redos
8.2 Aborting Tasks
8.3 Memory Allocation for Task Buffers

8.3.1 Avoiding malloc and new with Task Buffers
8.3.2 Using TOPC_MSG_PTR() to Avoid Copying Large Buffers
8.3.3 Allocation and Freeing of Task Buffers for TOPC_MSG_PTR()
8.3.4 Marshaling Complex Data Structures into `TOP-C' Task Buffers

8.4 Optimizing TOP-C Code for the Shared Memory Model

8.4.1 Reader-Writer Synchronization
8.4.2 Thread-Private Global Variables
8.4.3 Sharing Variables between Master and Slave and Volatile Variables
8.4.4 SMP Performance

8.5 Modifying TOP-C Code for the Sequential Memory Model
8.6 Caveats

9. `TOP-C' Raw Interface for Parallelizing Sequential Code

9.1 `TOP-C' raw functions
9.2 Parallelizing `for' Loops
9.3 Parallelizing `while' Loops

10. Acknowledgements
A. Summary of `TOP-C' Commands
B. Example `TOP-C' Application
C. Using a Different `MPI' with TOP-C
Function Index
Variable Index
Concept Index