Compiling collection-oriented languages onto massively parallel computers

Some issues and techniques are discussed for compiling collection-oriented languages for use on parallel and vector machines. Techniques for translating nested parallelism into flat parallelism are described. A compiler that translates a subset of Paralation Lisp into the instruction set of a virtual machine is discussed. The instructions of the virtual machine are simple vector instructions which could be further translated to a broad class of architectures including vector machines, single-instruction parallel machines, and multiple-instruction parallel machines. Another translator is also implemented that translates the virtual machine instructions into instructions for the Connection Machine (CM-2). The quicksort example in this paper is executed on the CM-2. Since actual parallel hardware is usually flat in nature, these techniques are useful to implementors of high-level collection-oriented languages. These languages express parallelism in a natural way that at first does not appear to be supportable by massively parallel machines. These techniques form a bridge from the convenience and power of nested collections and operations to the speed and simplicity of machines like the CM-2