[comp.newprod] Strand88 on networks of suns

david@sstl.UU.NET (David Catton) (04/26/91)

... Strand Software Technologies Ltd. announce a version of the parallel 
programming language STRAND88 running on a network of SUN workstations - this 
treats the network as a single  parallel machine and liberates significant 
computing resources to users who might have been unaware of the potential of 
the many workstations in their environment.

The networked version of STRAND88  enables users in the banking, defense and 
financial marketplace to write the new programs employing paradigms of 
data-fusion, stochastic systems and genetic algorithms which underpin these 
markets' interests in distributed systems.

Scientific users who have long made extensive use of STRAND88 's features in 
harnessing will find benefit in the new possibility for developing/running 
applications on local networks of workstations before committing to lengthy 
execution times on a supercomputer resource.

The educational market has realised the many benefits of teaching computer 
science courses with "hands-on" experience of SUN equipment. The networked SUN 
version of STRAND88 now allows the provision of realistic courses in 
distributed computation, parallelism and concurrency, time-warp simulation and 
ecological computer systems

STRAND88 offers a wide range of paradigms for these problem areas. In 
particular the object-oriented semantics enable peer-to-peer and 
cooperative/competitive models of distributed problem solving in addition to 
the client-server models that are currently available.

Users of STRAND88  reap the established benefits of the first language 
designed for machine independent and scalable programming on multiprocessors 
and multicomputers. The benefit of machine independence is that code can be 
developed on one machine and executed on any other 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.

Under the control of the networked STRAND88 system copies of the Strand system 
are loaded onto the individual workstations which can then be treated as nodes 
of a multicomputer. Work is distributed between the nodes by the execution of 
Strand code. The networked version of STRAND88 permits the user to configure 
more than one node of the multicomputer onto his host machine. This allows for 
finer control of load-balancing and a more social use of a shared resource.

"This release of the networked version of STRAND88 is a step towards our goal 
of the Distributed Programming Resource in the workplace," says Dr. Martin 
Gittins, Technical Director. "In such a workplace, where large multiprocessing 
machinery; number crunching equipment e.g. CRAY and networks of workstations, 
can all be made accessible by STRAND88, programmers achieve the most timely 
and economical use of the available compute resource".  

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 

for more details, 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