What a Parallel Programming Language Has to Let You Say,

Abstract

We have implemented in simulation a prototype language for the Connection Machine called CLI. CLi is an extrapolation of serial machine programming language technology: in CLl one programs the individual processors to perform local computations and talk to the communications network. We present details of the largest of our experiments with CLl, an interpreter for Scheme (a dialect of Lisp) that allows a large number of different Scheme programs to be run in parallel on the otherwise SIMD Connection Machine. Our aim was not to propose Scheme as a language for Connection Machine programming, but to gain experience using CLl to implement an interesting and familiar algorithm. Consideration of the difficulties we encountered led us to the conclusion that CLl programs do not capture enough of the casual structure of the processes they describe. Starting from this observation, we have designed a successor language called CGL (for Connection Graph Language).

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 1984
Accession Number
ADA147854

Entities

People

  • A. Bawden
  • P. E. Agre

Organizations

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Cyber
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Algorithms
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Compilers
  • Computations
  • Computer Languages
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Programs
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Instructions
  • Language
  • Load Monitoring
  • Object Oriented Programming
  • Object-Oriented Programming Language
  • Programming Languages
  • Virtual Machines

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Computational Linguistics
  • Parallel and Distributed Computing.
  • Personnel Management and Statistics in the Military and Department of Defense