Complexity issues in the design of functional languages with explicit parallelism

Author

Zimmermann, Wolf

Author_Institution

Int. Comput. Sci. Inst., Berkeley, CA, USA

fYear

1992

fDate

20-23 Apr 1992

Firstpage

34

Lastpage

43

Abstract

It is shown that for a functional language with explicit parallelisms, at least two different parallel operators are necessary from a complexity point of view. In principle, just one of these operators is semantically sufficient, but the other cannot be implemented in constant time using this one operator. The parallel functional language is a first-order language (in order to keep the semantics simple) and is intended for shared memory architectures, for example, PRAMS. Operational semantics for the various kinds of PRAMs (parallel random-access machines) are defined, and some examples of implementations of parallel algorithms in this language are given. This semantics also includes processor scheduling. The complexity results presented also apply to higher-order functional languages, because the lower-bound proofs for the simulation do not make use of the first-order property

Keywords

computational complexity; functional programming; parallel algorithms; parallel languages; random-access storage; shared memory systems; PRAMs; complexity results; explicit parallelisms; first-order language; higher-order functional languages; lower-bound proofs; parallel algorithms; parallel functional language; parallel operators; parallel random-access machines; processor scheduling; shared memory architectures; Algorithm design and analysis; Computer science; Hardware; Hypercubes; Memory architecture; Parallel algorithms; Parallel processing; Phase change random access memory; Processor scheduling; Read-write memory;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Computer Languages, 1992., Proceedings of the 1992 International Conference on

Conference_Location

Oakland, CA

Print_ISBN

0-8186-2585-6

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICCL.1992.185466

Filename

185466