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Parallel Objects for Multicores: A Glimpse at the Parallel Language Encore

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Formal Methods for Multicore Programming (SFM 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 9104))

Abstract

The age of multi-core computers is upon us, yet current programming languages, typically designed for single-core computers and adapted post hoc for multi-cores, remain tied to the constraints of a sequential mindset and are thus in many ways inadequate. New programming language designs are required that break away from this old-fashioned mindset. To address this need, we have been developing a new programming language called Encore, in the context of the European Project UpScale. The paper presents a motivation for the Encore language, examples of its main constructs, several larger programs, a formalisation of its core, and a discussion of some future directions our work will take. The work is ongoing and we started more or less from scratch. That means that a lot of work has to be done, but also that we need not be tied to decisions made for sequential language designs. Any design decision can be made in favour of good performance and scalability. For this reason, Encore offers an interesting platform for future exploration into object-oriented parallel programming.

Partly funded by the EU project FP7-612985 UpScale: From Inherent Concurrency to Massive Parallelism through Type-based Optimisations (http://www.upscale-project.eu).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This design should change, so that await will become more similar to get, but with a different effect on the active object.

  2. 2.

    Ideally, this should be: handler.handle( await fut). Future versions of Encore will support this semantics.

  3. 3.

    An alternative version of Par t is possible where the order in the collection is not preserved. This will be considered in more detail in future experiments.

  4. 4.

    As work in parallel types and combinators is work in progress, this list is likely to change and grow.

  5. 5.

    Relies on Maybe data type: in Haskell syntax data Maybe a = Nothing | Just a. Data types are at present being implemented. An alternative to Maybe is to use Par restricted to empty and singleton collections. With this encoding, the constructors for Maybe become Nothing = empty, Just a = liftv a (from Sect. 9.3), and the destructor, maybe ::

    figure ay

    in Haskell, is defined in Encore as def maybe

    figure az

    .

  6. 6.

    Note that at the time of writing, the capability system has not been fully implemented.

  7. 7.

    Encore may eventually not include all kinds of capabilities presented here, this is a matter under consideration.

  8. 8.

    \(\mu \) Encore supports interfaces, though Encore does not yet. Encore with combine interfaces with traits.

  9. 9.

    In Encore the constructor does not run asynchronously.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Technology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Stephan Brandauer, Elias Castegren, Dave Clarke, Kiko Fernandez-Reyes, Tobias Wrigstad & Albert Mingkun Yang

  2. Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Einar Broch Johnsen, Ka I. Pun & S. Lizeth Tapia Tarifa

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  1. Stephan Brandauer
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Correspondence to Dave Clarke .

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  1. Università di Urbino "Carlo Bo", Urbino, Italy

    Marco Bernardo

  2. University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Einar Broch Johnsen

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Brandauer, S. et al. (2015). Parallel Objects for Multicores: A Glimpse at the Parallel Language Encore . In: Bernardo, M., Johnsen, E. (eds) Formal Methods for Multicore Programming. SFM 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9104. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18941-3_1

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