ran@bloom-beacon.mit.edu (Randy Osborne) (06/01/88)
[ This was on comp.transputer. Since we're in the language / definition discussion, I thought I'd send it along. Steve ] In article <8805301428.AA17144@tcgould.TN.CORNELL.EDU> K312240@AEARN.BITNET (Klaus Kusche) writes: >I'm looking for any kind of information about concepts >and implementations of parallel Lisp (again, not only >transputer-based!). > >Especially, I would be interested in some good papers on Multilisp. Papers on Multilisp: The original paper. Gives detailed description of Multilisp and its implementation. Halstead, R., "Multilisp: A Language for Concurrent Symbolic Computation", ACM Trans. on Prog. Languages and Systems, October 1985, p. 501-538 The following two papers are more tutorial in nature. Halstead, R., "Parallel Symbolic Computing," IEEE Computer 19:8, August 1986, p. 35-43 Halstead, R., "Parallel Computing Using Multilisp," J. Kowalik, ed., Parallel Computation and Computers for Artifical Intelligence, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1987 Describes exception handling implementation: exception values, catch/throw, unwind-protect. Halstead, R., J. Loaiza, "Exception Handling in Multilisp", 1985 Int'l. Conf. on Parallel Processing, St. Charles, Ill., August 1985, p. 822-830 Discusses the three major ways to use futures and describes other "lessons from experience". Halstead, R., "An Assessment of Multilisp: Lessons From Experience", International Journal of Parallel Programming 15:6, Dec. 1986, Plenum Press, New York Multilisp is available from the Parallel Processing Group at M.I.T. The present implementation is a byte-code interpreter which runs on uniprocessor machines supporting UNIX (BSD 4.2) and the multiprocessor Encore Multimax (and our Concert Multiprocessor). Little work should be necessary to port the implementation to other shared memory multiprocessors, which like the Multimax, support UNIX. I'll post details on how to obtain this implementation of Multilisp if people express interest. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Randy Osborne ran@vx.lcs.mit.edu