Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!purdue!gatech!hubcap!lgy
From: lgy@pupthy2.princeton.edu (Larry Yaffe)
Newsgroups: comp.parallel
Subject: Re: parallel numerical algorithms
Message-ID: <1784@hubcap.UUCP>
Date: 1 Jun 88 12:15:21 GMT
Sender: fpst@hubcap.UUCP
Lines: 30
Approved: parallel@hubcap.clemson.edu


In article <1776@hubcap.UUCP> gerald@umb.umb.edu (Gerald Ostheimer) writes:
-
-You should take a look at the work on the tagged-token dataflow machine of
-MIT's Computation Structures Group under Arvind. (Their work, for some reason
-unbeknownst to me, did not yet receive any attention in this newsgroup.)
-Their combined language/architecure approach meets the following of your
-criteria:
- o  side-effect free: to a large degree--there is actually a limited form of
-    side-effects, which does, however, not affect determinacy: their language
-    Id (speak 'Idd') offers something called I-structures. I-structures are,
-    intuitively, arrays whose fields can be initialized exactly once, but
-    possibly by side-effect. Deals quite nicely with some serious problems of
-    pure functional languages (no exorbitant storage requirements, no extensive
-    copying). Also makes translation of those 'dusty' Fortran programs easier.

    I'd like to hear more about how this language avoids excessive copying
& wasteful memory usage.  How do standard tasks like matrix multiplication, 
binary tree insertions, hash table management, etc. work?

-Gerald				"When I use a word, it means
-		 just what I choose it to mean -
-				 neither more nor less"
-				 -Humpty Dumpty, Through the Looking Glass

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