Implementation of Non-Strict Functional Programming Languages (Research Monographs in Parallel and Distributed Computing)

Traub, Kenneth R.

ISBN 10: 0262700425 / ISBN 13: 9780262700429

Published by The MIT Press (edition F First Edition), 1991

About this Item

It's a preowned item in good condition and includes all the pages. It may have some general signs of wear and tear, such as markings, highlighting, slight damage to the cover, minimal wear to the binding, etc., but they will not affect the overall reading experience.

Seller Inventory # 0262700425-11-1

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Implementation of Non-Strict Functional Programming Languages (Research Monographs in Parallel and Distributed Computing)
• Publisher: The MIT Press (edition F First Edition)
• Publication Date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262700425
• ISBN 13: 9780262700429
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition: F First Edition.
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

Modern "non-strict" functional programming languages are a powerful means of programming highly parallel computers, but are intrinsically difficult to compile well because decisions about ordering of subcomputations must be taken at compile time. This book represents a new technique for compiling such languages by partitioning a program into sequential threads. While the interleaving of threads can vary at run time, within each thread the order is fixed.

A program is compiled by analyzing its data dependences, and developing from that a set of partitioning constraints. These practical algorithms are founded on a new theory of data dependence and ordering within functional programs, which defines dependence graphs in terms of a rewrite-rule operational semantics for the language.

By attacking the ordering problem directly, the book departs from previous approaches that obtain partitioning as a byproduct of optimizing lazy evaluation, and cleanly separates partitioning from other code generation issues. Furthermore, the method is flexible enough to produce both lazy code and also a less restrictive "lenient" variant which allows larger threads with only a slight decrease in expressive power. Code generation and optimization are explored in depth for both uniprocessor and multiprocessor targets.

Kenneth R. Traub is a researcher with the Motorola Cambridge Research Center.

Contents: Introduction. Background - Functional Language Compilers. Lenient Evaluation. Functional Quads. Code Generation. A Syntactic Theory of Data Dependence. Dependence-Based Partitioning. Conclusion.