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An abstract machine for restricted AND-parallel execution of logic programs

Session 1a: Parallel Implementations

Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNCS,volume 225)

Abstract

Although the sequential execution speed of logic programs has been greatly improved by the concepts introduced in the Warren Abstract Machine (WAM), parallel execution represents the only way to increase this speed beyond the natural limits of sequential systems. However, most proposed parallel logic programming execution models lack the performance optimizations and storage efficiency of sequential systems. This paper presents a parallel abstract machine which is an extension of the WAM and is thus capable of supporting AND-Parallelism without giving up the optimizations present in sequential implementations. A suitable instruction set, which can be used as a target by a variety of logic programming languages, is also included. Special instructions are provided to support a generalized version of "Restricted AND-Parallelism" (RAP), a technique which reduces the overhead traditionally associated with the run-time management of variable binding conflicts to a series of simple run-time checks, which select one out of a series of compiled execution graphs.

Keywords

  • Logic programming
  • Parallel processing
  • Warren abstract machine
  • Restricted and-parallelism
  • Prolog

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  • DOI: 10.1007/3-540-16492-8_62
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© 1986 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Hermenegildo, M.V. (1986). An abstract machine for restricted AND-parallel execution of logic programs. In: Shapiro, E. (eds) Third International Conference on Logic Programming. ICLP 1986. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 225. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-16492-8_62

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-16492-8_62

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-16492-0

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