will@sstl.UU.NET (William Pickles) (04/26/91)
... Strand Software Technologies Ltd. announce versions of the parallel programming language STRAND88 for use on MS-DOS and Mac's. STRAND88 is designed for large scale MIMD parallelism on irregular or prototype applications. It is commonly implemented on multiprocessors and multicomputers. These version are centered on the educational market to allow experimentation with scalable and machine independent *parallel* algorithms. The benefit of machine independence is that code can be developed on one machine and executed on another machine type without modification or recompilation. The property of scalability means that programs fit onto available hardware again without modification and adapt to the economics of the user's resources. STRAND88 also brings the benefits of code reuse by its ease of construction of "harnesses" which allow deployment of established (sequential) C and Fortran codes over a multiprocessor. Such harnesses are again machine independent and scalable. The STRAND88 system is under continuous development and the second commercial release of STRAND88, "Buckingham" is now being distributed. STRAND88 is currently available on : SUN workstations all commercially significant transputer platforms Sequent (balance,symmetry) Encore Multimax, Cogent XTM Intel iPSC/2 , iPSC/860, BBN Butterfly Macintosh II workstations from NeXT, MIPS, Atari The Macintosh version is a resricted version for educational use. ( A professional version is also available.) The MS-DOS version runs in a generic 640K machine and both come with a manual set (230pp) for $195. The book "Strand: new concepts in parallelism" by Taylor and Foster is available from Prentice-Hall ISBN 0-13-850587-X. for more details, other prices, availability email strand@sstl.uucp in western US call (503) 642 0151 in eastern US call (703) 683 7010 in rest of world call UK +44 582 84 24 24