[mod.ai] Seminar - Parallel Production System Algorithms

AI.FARQUHAR@R20.UTEXAS.EDU.UUCP (03/24/87)

				   
	    The COMPUTER SCIENCES GRADUATE STUDENT COUNCIL
			       PRESENTS
				   
			  Daniel P. Miranker
				   
			Recent Developments in
		Parallel Production System Algorithms
				   
		  at  the  CSGSC  BROWN-BAG  SEMINAR
		   Friday,  March 27,  12:00  Noon
			      Tay  2.106
				   
		All Students and Faculty are invited.
		      Okay to bring your lunch.
				   
The development of a parallel production system interpreters may be
seperated into three nearly independent facets, low-level matching,
partitioning of the rule base and synchronizing the partitions.  This
talk will address the partitioning issue.
				   
A problem associated with parallelizing production system execution is
that on any given production system cycle only a small subset of the
rules require processing.  Worse, on a given cycle, often the
processing requirements for a single rule will completely dominate the
execution time.  "Copy and constrain" is a method by which the
processing requirements for matching a single rule may be distributed
over many processors.  This method has been shown to very effectively
reduce the variance of the match times of different rules.  Further,
this method has implications for the fault tolerant execution of
production systems.  It appears, due to increased processor
utilization, that fault tolerance may be introduced into a parallel
production system interpreter without modification of the hardware and
without significant performance degradation.

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