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MULTILISP: a language for concurrent symbolic computation

MULTILISP: a language for concurrent symbolic computation Multilisp is a version of the Lisp dialect Scheme extended with constructs for parallel execution. Like Scheme, Multilisp is oriented toward symbolic computation. Unlike some parallel programming languages, Multilisp incorporates constructs for causing side effects and for explicitly introducing parallelism. The potential complexity of dealing with side effects in a parallel context is mitigated by the nature of the parallelism constructs and by support for abstract data types: a recommended Multilisp programming style is presented which, if followed, should lead to highly parallel, easily understandable programs. Multilisp is being implemented on the 32-processor Concert multiprocessor; however, it is ultimately intended for use on larger multiprocessors. The current implementation, called Concert Multilisp , is complete enough to run the Multilisp compiler itself and has been run on Concert prototypes including up to eight processors. Concert Multilisp uses novel techniques for task scheduling and garbage collection. The task scheduler helps control excessive resource utilization by means of an unfair scheduling policy; the garbage collector uses a multiprocessor algorithm based on the incremental garbage collector of Baker. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS) Association for Computing Machinery

MULTILISP: a language for concurrent symbolic computation

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Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
Copyright
The ACM Portal is published by the Association for Computing Machinery. Copyright © 2010 ACM, Inc.
Subject
Concurrent programming structures
ISSN
0164-0925
DOI
10.1145/4472.4478
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Multilisp is a version of the Lisp dialect Scheme extended with constructs for parallel execution. Like Scheme, Multilisp is oriented toward symbolic computation. Unlike some parallel programming languages, Multilisp incorporates constructs for causing side effects and for explicitly introducing parallelism. The potential complexity of dealing with side effects in a parallel context is mitigated by the nature of the parallelism constructs and by support for abstract data types: a recommended Multilisp programming style is presented which, if followed, should lead to highly parallel, easily understandable programs. Multilisp is being implemented on the 32-processor Concert multiprocessor; however, it is ultimately intended for use on larger multiprocessors. The current implementation, called Concert Multilisp , is complete enough to run the Multilisp compiler itself and has been run on Concert prototypes including up to eight processors. Concert Multilisp uses novel techniques for task scheduling and garbage collection. The task scheduler helps control excessive resource utilization by means of an unfair scheduling policy; the garbage collector uses a multiprocessor algorithm based on the incremental garbage collector of Baker.

Journal

ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS) – Association for Computing Machinery

Published: Oct 1, 1985

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