Re: Unpopular parameter passing mechanisms and parallelisation

Anton Lokhmotov <al407@cam.ac.uk>
Wed, 31 Oct 2007 16:41:53 +0000

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From: Anton Lokhmotov <al407@cam.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 16:41:53 +0000
Organization: Compilers Central
References: 07-10-082 07-10-089 07-10-091 07-10-094 07-10-097
Keywords: storage, design
Posted-Date: 31 Oct 2007 13:41:05 EDT

George,


I think the following paper discusses similar ideas to yours (Haskell,
CBN, micro-threads):
Tim Harris, Satnam Singh. *Feedback directed implicit parallelism
(http://research.microsoft.com/~tharris/papers/2007-fdip.pdf)*
<http://research.microsoft.com/%7Etharris/papers/2007-fdip.pdf> /ICFP,
Oct 2007
/
> Nowadays we don't even have the vector processors,
Not quite true: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/25/236200


> the SIMD units in todays CPUs don't have the same semantics.
...the same as vector assignment statements? But - in your own words -
machines like Cray-1 also didn't have it.


> Additional temporary storage is almost always required to get the desired behavior
> For vector processing, CBVR is mostly an intellectual convenience for
> the programmer rather than a useful execution strategy. It doesn't
> buy you any more than other vector methods.
>
...what other methods? I think CBV(D)R *is* useful in the age of
parallelism (and that's was the reason for my recalling it).


> As a parameter passing method, CBVR was deprecated because most
> programmers found it confusing.


But today is different because CBV(D)R is *more natural* for *parallel*
programming (I am again alluding to the August discussion on the
semantics of vector assignment statements).


Anton.


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