COMPILING GRAPH-BASED PROGRAM SPECIFICATIONS

A graph-based program specification includes: a plurality of components, each corresponding to a processing task and including one or more ports for sending or receiving one or more data elements; and one or more links, each connecting an output port of an upstream component of the plurality of components to an input port of a downstream component of the plurality of components. Prepared code is generated representing subsets of the plurality of components, including: identifying a plurality of subset boundaries between components in different subsets based at least in part on characteristics of linked components; forming the subsets based on the identified subset boundaries; and generating prepared code for each formed subset that when used for execution by a runtime system causes processing tasks corresponding to the components in that formed subset to be performed according to information embedded in the prepared code for that formed subset.