Subject: Summary: General Purpose Parallel Programming
From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 92 11:37:06 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.parallel

This is a summary of the responses to my recent request for
information:

>
> I am doing research on "general purpose optimistic parallel programming",
> and would like to hear about any related research.
>

The responses I recieved pointed to the following research efforts:

Andy Nisbet ([email-masked])

	Working in the simulation of multi-processor DSP systems.
	Working on an implementation in C++ under Sunview, on Suns.

Dave Jefferson ([email-masked]) and
Kong Li        ([email-masked])

	Doing research on using optimistic synchronization, and are
	designing a language called Symmetry for this purpose.  

	The language does not resemble C++ or active objects or any
	other current programming notion.  Rather, it is based on
	the idea of symmetry between communication and memory, ie.
	that memory should be viewed as a special kind of
	communication, and hence all memory-oriented language
	notions (read, write, variable, address, pointer, etc.)
	should correspond to communication notions.  Another
	principle, inherited from Time Warp, is strict determinism.

	Dave Jefferson stated that he believes that in implementing
	the language, hardware support is necessary for good
	rollback performance, and cited Fujimtos ideas on this
	subject.

	Kong Li's Phd thesis will focus on the design and
	implementation of Symmetry.

Rajive Bagrodia ([email-masked]) and
Wen-Toh Liao

	Have designed a language called Maisie escpecially for
	parallel simulation.  This language permits the use of
	several different synchronization methods, including
	optimisic ones.  Have a paper on Maisie [Bagr90].

Crispen Cowan ([email-masked])

	Working on optimistic Hermes.

Richard Fujimoto ([email-masked])

	Has a student doing work on using Time Warp extensions to
	automatically parallelize irregular sequential code.
	Nothing published yet, although the overall approach is
	descriped in "The Virtual Time Machine", [Fuji89].

Pete Tinker ([email-masked])

	Has a paper on "Task Scheduling for general rollback
	computing", [Tink89].  This paper is referenced from [Fuji89]??

References plus other relevant papers: (alphabetical order)

@article{Baco91,
	author="David Bacon and Robert Strom",
	title="Optimistic Parallelization of Communicating Sequential 
							Processes",
	journal="ACM Sigplan Notices",
	year=91,
	volume=26,number=7,chapter=21,pages="155--166"}

@article{Bagr90,
	author="Rajive Bagrodia and {Wen-Toh} Liao",
	title="Maisie: A language and Optimizing Environment for
					Distributed Simulation",
	journal="Proceedings of the SCS Multiconference	on Distributed
							Simulation)",
	year=90,month=jan,
	volume=20,number=1,pages="205--210"},

@article{Fuji89,
	author="Richard Fujimoto",
	title="The Virtual Time Machine",
	journal="Symposium on Parallel Algorithms and Architectures",
	year=89,pages="199--208"}

@article{Fuji90,
	author="Richard Fujimoto",
	title="Parallel Discrete Event Simulation",
	journal="Communications of the ACM",
	year=90,month=oct,
	volume=33,number=10,pages="30--53"}

@article{Jeff85,
	author="David Jefferson",
	title="Virtual Time",
	journal="ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems",
	year=85,month=jul,
	volume=7,number=3,pages="404--425"}

@article{Reih92,
	author="Peter Reiher",
	title="Experiences with Optimistic Synchronization for Distributed
						Operating Systems",
	journal="SEDMS III (Symposium on Experiences with Distributed and 
						Multiprocessor Systems)",
	year=92,chapter=20,pages="59--76"}

@article{Tink88,
	author="Pete Tinker and Morry Katz",
	title="Parallel Execution of Sequential Scheme with ParaTran",
	journal="ACM, Proceedings of Lisp and Functional Programming
							Conference", 
	year=88,month=jul,pages="28--39"}

@article{Tink89,
	author="Pete Tinker",
	title="Task Scheduling for General Rollback Computing",
	journal="International Conference on Parallel Processing",
	year=89,month=aug}

Adam.
______________________________________________________________________________
[email-masked]