Buch, Englisch, 266 Seiten, Format (B × H): 213 mm x 277 mm, Gewicht: 635 g
Reihe: Research Monographs in Parallel and Distributed Computing
Buch, Englisch, 266 Seiten, Format (B × H): 213 mm x 277 mm, Gewicht: 635 g
Reihe: Research Monographs in Parallel and Distributed Computing
ISBN: 978-0-262-61057-5
Verlag: Penguin Random House LLC
Recent progress in VLSI provides massive parallelism but general purpose
parallel computers remain elusive due to limited communications performance. This
book proposes a new high level approach to programming that addresses the pragmatic
issue of how a computation is distributed across a machine.The book's approach is
based on functional programming and has significant advantages over existing
comparable approaches, extending the domain of functional programming to include
computer architectures in which communication costs are not negligible. It looks at
how high-level functional programming languages can be used to specify, reason
about, and implement parallel programs for a variety of multiprocessor systems, but
in particular a class of loosely coupled multiprocessors whose operation can be
described by a process network In these networks the nodes correspond to processes
and the arcs to communications channels.A simple language called Caliban is
described in which the functional program text is augmented with a declarative
description of how processes are partitioned and mapped onto a network of processing
elements. The notation gains expressive power by allowing these annotations to be
generated by predicates defined in the functional language. Thus, common
communications structures have simple and concise definitions as "network forming
operators." The main objective of these annotations is to provide an abstract
description of the process network specified by the program so that an efficient
mapping of processes to processors can be carried out by the compiler.Paul H. J.
Kelly is Research Assistant in the Department of Computing at Imperial College,
London Functional Programming for LooselyCoupled Multiprocessors is included in the
series Research Monographs in Parallel and Distributed Computing, copublished with
Pitman Publishing.
