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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Paul WatsonORCiD
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Whilst there has been much work over the last ten years on the parallel implementation of logic programming, the vast majority of it has been focused on shared memory multiprocessor systems. In this paper, however, we focus on the exploitation of the other major type of parallel architecture - distributed memory systems. We present the design and study the performance of the Dorpp or-parallel Prolog system on the EDS parallel machine. This is basically a distributed memory machine except for one interesting and novel feature - access to non-local memory is supported, and copied data is cached locally, though there is no built-in memory coherence scheme. Dorpp uses a novel distributed shared memory model for implicitly exploiting or-parallelism in Prolog programs. It attempts to exploit locality and reduce communication overheads through its scheduling mechanisms and by caching accesses to remote shared data. The specific problems of memory coherency for or-parallel Prolog are discussed and novel solutions are proposed. We present detailed performance analysis of the behaviour of Dorpp on a parallel simulator of the EDS machine. This analysis shows that the design is efficient and highlights some general results which are relevant to all implementations of or-parallel prolog on distributed memory systems.
Author(s): Silva F, Watson P
Publication type: Report
Publication status: Published
Series Title:
Year: 1997
Print publication date: 01/07/1997
Source Publication Date: July 1997
Report Number: 97-6
Institution: DCC - FC & LIACC, Universidade do Porto
Place Published: Portugal
