[comp.parallel] PRESTO

carson@rice.edu (Jim Carson) (06/19/89)

In Article 714 of comp.parallel gboddy@r1.cs.man.ac.uk writes:
> Please could anyone send me some information on a parallel
> object-oriented system called "Presto". I think it was 
> developed at the University of Washington.

PRESTO is a programming system for writing object-oriented parallel
programs in a shared-memory multiprocessor environment.[1]  PRESTO
was developed at the University of Washington by Brian Bershad, 
Edward Lazowska, Henry Levy, and David Wagner.

PRESTO provides the programmer with a set of basic classes useful 
for writing parallel programs in the C++ programming language.[2] 
These classes include lightweight threads for concurrency, and 
locking mechanisms for synchronization.

The orignal version of PRESTO ran on a Sequent Balance 21000[3].  
There have been ports to other architectures, including the Sequent 
Symmetry, Sun, and DEC VAX.  Version 0.3 will soon be available from
june.cs.washington.edu.

Some References:

[1] "PRESTO: A System for Object-Oriented Parallel Programming," Brian N.
Bershad, Edward D. Lazowska, and Henry M. Levy.  Department of Computer 
Science, University of Washington.  Techincal Report 87-09-01, September
1987.

[2] "The PRESTO User's Manual," Brian M. Bershad.   Department of Computer 
Science, University of Washington.  Techincal Report 88-01-04, January
1988.

[3] "An Open Environment for Building Parallel Programming Systems," 
Brian N. Bershad, Edward D. Lazowska, Henry M. Levy and David B. Wagner.
Department of Computer Science, University of Washington.  Technical
Report 88-01-03, January 1988.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Carson                        Dept of Electrical & Computer Engineering
carson@rice.edu                   Rice University
.!{sun,husc6}!rice!titan!carson  Houston, TX 77252