Abstract
This paper introduces IC-Prolog II — a new implementation of Prolog that is particularly suited to distributed applications. Unlike other work on distributed logic programming, we do not aim to improve the raw performance of a logic program nor do we require multiprocessor machines or specialised hardware. Instead, our aim is to widen the applicability of logic programming to encompass new classes of practical applications which require the co-ordination of concurrently executing programs on separate workstations to communicate over the network.
IC-Prolog II features multiple threads, a Parlog sub-system and high-level communication primitives. Multiple threads enables the concurrent execution of independent goals. The Parlog sub-system allows local fine-grained parallelism to be specified. In IC-Prolog II, Prolog can call Parlog and viceversa. The combination of the two logic languages offers greater expressive power than simply the sum of the two since different components of the same application may use either Parlog or Prolog or both. The high-level communication primitives provide the means for independent IC-Prolog II processes on different machines on a network to communicate. The result is a language well-suited for writing network-friendly applications.
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Chu, D. (1994). I.C. Prolog II: a Multi-threaded Prolog System. In: Tick, E., Succi, G. (eds) Implementations of Logic Programming Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-2690-2_2
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