The university said this week that computer science researchers at the school have released an interactive tool, called DPJizer, to simplify writing safe parallel programs in DPJ (Deterministic Parallell Java), a Java-based modern type and effect system .

DPJizer is offered as an Eclipse plug-in and is described as the first interactive, practical type and effect inference tool for a modern object-oriented effect system. An effect system, the university said, requires extensive annotations from programmers who should strive to keep annotations in sync with code. DPJizer saves time by performing a  whole-program analysis to infer some DPJ annotations automatically, with many being more precise than those written manually. Also, programmers can review and change annotations inferred by DPJizer.

"DPJizer increases the productivity of programmers in writing safe and deterministic-by-default parallel programs for multi-core systems," said Mohsen Vakilian of the Illinois research team. The tool makes it much easier to write and maintain DPJ programs, Vakilian said.

Instructions for downloading DPJizer can be found .