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This paper presents the chare kernel system, which supports parallel computations with irregular structure. The chare kernel is a collection of primitive functions that manage chares, manipulate messages, invoke atomic computations, and coordinate concurrent activities. Programs written in the chare kernel language can be executed on different parallel machines without change. Users writing in such programs concern themselves with creation of parallel actions but not with assigning them to specific processors. We describe the design and implementation of the chare kernel. Performance of chare kernel programs on two hypercube machines, the Intel iPSC/2 and the NCUBE, is also given.