User loginNavigation |
Synchronic Computation IIMay I draw members attention to an updated version of an earlier attempt to bypass the iteration, data structure, and deadlock issues associated with conventional dataflow models. As far as I am aware, no pure λ-calculus simulation environment for a high level programming language such as Haskell has ever been constructed, that has viable time and space complexity characteristics. That difficulty lends support to the view that alternative models should be considered, where software is not fully abstracted from hardware. An 8 page pdf summary of the material may be accessed here. Abstract Space is a dataflow oriented language that exploits the massive parallelism available in a formal model of computation called the Synchronic A-Ram, and provides a framework for developing general-purpose parallel environments for FPGA and reconfigurable architectures. Space is an example of an interlanguage; a circuit oriented, textual environment that was developed to address shortcomings associated with conventional tree languages for representing dataflow, allowing complex syntax trees to be collapsed into a simplified form. Space expresses variable grained MIMD parallelism, is modular, strictly typed, and deterministic. Barring operations associated with memory allocation and compilation, modules cannot access global variables, and are referentially transparent. Modules exhibit a small, sequential state transition system, aiding verification. Space deals with communication, scheduling, and resource contention issues in parallel computing, by resolving them explicitly in an incremental manner, module by module, whilst ascending the ladder of abstraction. An environment has been developed, that incorporates a simulator and compiler that transform Space programs into Synchronic A-Ram machine code consisting of only three bit-level instructions, and a marking instruction. Space and the Synchronic A-Ram do not exhibit the iteration, data structure, and deadlock related issues associated with conventional dataflow models. The implementation of high level (parallel) computation on a simple formal model, closes a missing link in computer science, and points to architectures and environments that are less susceptible to contention and programmability issues associated with multithreading on processor networks. By Alex Berka at 2011-03-28 12:00 | LtU Forum | previous forum topic | next forum topic | other blogs | 6836 reads
|
Browse archives
Active forum topics |
Recent comments
25 weeks 3 days ago
25 weeks 3 days ago
25 weeks 3 days ago
47 weeks 4 days ago
51 weeks 6 days ago
1 year 1 week ago
1 year 1 week ago
1 year 4 weeks ago
1 year 8 weeks ago
1 year 8 weeks ago