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