Description #
Chapel is a high-performance, compiled parallel programming language designed to improve the productivity of developers writing scalable applications on modern multi-core and distributed systems.
History #
Chapel was created by Cray Inc. in 2004 as part of the DARPA High Productivity Computing Systems (HPCS) initiative. It was intended to bridge the gap between ease of use and performance for high-performance computing (HPC). The language continues to be developed as an open-source project with contributions from the wider scientific computing community.
Hello World Code #
writeln("Hello, World!");How to Run #
Option 1: Online
https://chapel-lang.org/try-it-online.html
Option 2: Local
- Install Chapel from https://chapel-lang.org/download.html
- Compile and run: bashCopyEdit
chpl hello.chpl ./hello
Key Concepts #
- Syntax style: Clean and concise, similar to Python and C
- Typing discipline: Optional static typing with type inference
- Execution model: Compiled to C, then to native binary; supports parallel and distributed execution
- Common use cases: High-performance computing, scientific computing, data analytics
- Toolchain or ecosystem:
chplcompiler, Chapel standard libraries, concurrency constructs - Paradigms supported: Imperative, parallel, functional
- Compilation details: Translates to C, then compiled with a C compiler
- Strengths or quirks: Built-in parallelism and distributed computing primitives
- Libraries/frameworks: Chapel standard modules, interoperability with C
- Community/adoption: Growing in the HPC and research community
Try It Online #
https://chapel-lang.org/try-it-online.html
Fun Facts #
Chapel supports parallel constructs like forall, coforall, and begin as first-class citizens in the language. It aims to make parallel programming as approachable as writing serial code.
