Parallel Implementation of Functional Languages Using Small Processes
John Glauert · 1996
We report work in progress on the implementation of languages that integrate concurrent and functional programming styles. A translation scheme is presented for mapping such languages into process networks using a simple notation based on communication between named processes. The translation of functional code is sequential, but parallelism arises from use of concurrency constructs in the source language. Early implementation experiments have used graph rewriting techniques, although work on a more direct implementation is in progress. 1 Introduction and Background This paper reports work done at ECRC in close collaboration with Bent Thomsen and Lone Leth. The work has focussed on techniques for implementing the Facile language [GPM89] which enhances the --calculus with primitives for process spawning and channel-based communication in the style of CCS [Mil80]. Recent work by Milner using the ß--calculus [MPW89] and its polyadic form [Mil91] shows that a --expression may be translate...