Dryad was a research project at

Microsoft Research Microsoft Research (MSR) is the research subsidiary of Microsoft. It was created in 1991 by Richard Rashid, Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold with the intent to advance state-of-the-art computing and solve difficult world problems through technologi ...

for a general purpose runtime for execution of

data parallel Data parallelism is parallelization across multiple processors in parallel computing environments. It focuses on distributing the data across different nodes, which operate on the data in parallel. It can be applied on regular data structures like ...

applications. The research prototypes of the Dryad and DryadLINQ data-parallel processing frameworks are available in source form at

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Overview

Microsoft made several preview releases of this technology available as add-ons to Windows HPC Server 2008 R2. An application written for Dryad is modeled as a

directed acyclic graph In mathematics, particularly graph theory, and computer science, a directed acyclic graph (DAG) is a directed graph with no directed cycles. That is, it consists of vertices and edges (also called ''arcs''), with each edge directed from one ve ...

(DAG). The DAG defines the

dataflow In computing, dataflow is a broad concept, which has various meanings depending on the application and context. In the context of software architecture, data flow relates to stream processing or reactive programming. Software architecture Dataf ...

of the application, and the vertices of the graph defines the operations that are to be performed on the data. The "computational vertices" are written using sequential constructs, devoid of any

concurrency Concurrent means happening at the same time. Concurrency, concurrent, or concurrence may refer to: Law * Concurrence, in jurisprudence, the need to prove both ''actus reus'' and ''mens rea'' * Concurring opinion (also called a "concurrence"), a ...

mutual exclusion In computer science, mutual exclusion is a property of concurrency control, which is instituted for the purpose of preventing race conditions. It is the requirement that one thread of execution never enters a critical section while a concurrent ...

semantics. The Dryad runtime parallelizes the dataflow graph by distributing the computational vertices across various execution engines (which can be multiple processor cores on the same computer or different physical computers connected by a network, as in a

cluster may refer to: Science and technology Astronomy * Cluster (spacecraft), constellation of four European Space Agency spacecraft * Asteroid cluster, a small asteroid family * Cluster II (spacecraft), a European Space Agency mission to study t ...

). Scheduling of the computational vertices on the available hardware is handled by the Dryad runtime, without any explicit intervention by the developer of the application or administrator of the network. The flow of data between one computational vertex to another is implemented by using communication "channels" between the vertices, which in physical implementation is realized by

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suit ...

streams,

shared memory In computer science, shared memory is memory that may be simultaneously accessed by multiple programs with an intent to provide communication among them or avoid redundant copies. Shared memory is an efficient means of passing data between progr ...

or temporary files. A stream is used at runtime to transport a finite number of

structured Structuring, also known as smurfing in banking jargon, is the practice of executing financial transactions such as making bank deposits in a specific pattern, calculated to avoid triggering financial institutions to file reports required by law ...

''Items''. Dryad defines a

domain-specific language A domain-specific language (DSL) is a computer language specialized to a particular application domain. This is in contrast to a general-purpose language (GPL), which is broadly applicable across domains. There are a wide variety of DSLs, ranging f ...

, which is implemented via a

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

library, that is used to create and model a Dryad execution graph. Computational vertices are written using standard C++ constructs. To make them accessible to the Dryad runtime, they must be encapsulated in a

class Class or The Class may refer to: Common uses not otherwise categorized * Class (biology), a taxonomic rank * Class (knowledge representation), a collection of individuals or objects * Class (philosophy), an analytical concept used differentl ...

that inherits from the GraphNode base class. The graph is defined by adding edges; edges are added by using a composition operator (defined by Dryad) that connects two graphs (or two nodes of a graph) with an edge.

Managed code Managed code is computer program code that requires and will execute only under the management of a Common Language Infrastructure (CLI); Virtual Execution System (VES); virtual machine, e.g. .NET, CoreFX, or .NET Framework; Common Language Runti ...

wrappers for the Dryad

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standa ...

can also be written. There exist several high-level language compilers which use Dryad as a runtime; examples include

Scope Scope or scopes may refer to: People with the surname * Jamie Scope (born 1986), English footballer * John T. Scopes (1900–1970), central figure in the Scopes Trial regarding the teaching of evolution Arts, media, and entertainment * Cinem ...

(Structured Computations Optimized for Parallel Execution) and DryadLINQ. In October 2011, Microsoft discontinued active development on Dryad, shifting focus to the

Apache Hadoop Apache Hadoop () is a collection of open-source software utilities that facilitates using a network of many computers to solve problems involving massive amounts of data and computation. It provides a software framework for distributed storage ...

framework.

References

External links

Dryad: Programming the Data Center

Dryad Home Video of Michael Isard explaining Dryad at Google
{{Parallel computing Concurrent programming libraries Distributed computing architecture Microsoft free software Microsoft Research Software using the Apache license Windows-only free software

Overview

References

Further reading

External links