ANNOUNCE: Release of APRIL compiler

                                                      APRIL 1.0
              Automatic Parallelization of Divide and Conquer Algorithms


APRIL is the name of a new programming language designed for the automatic
parallelization of divide and conquer algorithms. A compiler, called april,
translates APRIL programs into C programs which contain explicit message
passing calls and which can be run on parallel computers (e.g., networks
of workstations). The aim in the development of APRIL was to provide an
easy-to-use programming model which allows the efficient exploitation
of available parallel computing power.


APRIL is similar to PASCAL but (among other differences) has the additional
keywords "parbegin" and "parend" which allow you to tell the compiler that
certain recursive procedure calls (typical for divide and conquer algorithms)
can be executed in parallel on separate processors.


The APRIL compiler package and documentation is now available via
anonymous ftp at


                        papa.informatik.tu-muenchen.de


in directory


                        /pub/april.


There are two files: april.tar.gz (tar'ed and gzip'ed, 122,596 bytes)
and april_manual.ps.gz (gzip'ed PostScript: 84,896 bytes).


Contents of april.tar.gz:


  - april compiler (source code)
  - run-time support libraries (source code)
  - simple example programs written in APRIL, including a program for
      calculating Mandelbrot images and a program for solving the travling
      salesman problem by a brute-force method


Contents of april_manual.ps.gz:


  - APRIL User Manual in PostScript format


Platforms:


  The APRIL programming system (compiler and libraries) was developed and
  tested on networks of HP 9000/720 workstations running HP-UX and SUN
  SparcStations running SunOS 4.1. In principle, APRIL should work on
  any target system provided that PVM can be installed on it. During the
  development of APRIL we used PVM version 3.2.6 and 3.3.7, but any version
  up from 3.2 should work.


  PVM is a Parallel Virtual Machine System which enables a collection of
  heterogeneous computers to be used as a coherent and flexible concurrent
  computational resource. It can be obtained via anonymous ftp from
  netlib2.cs.utk.edu. For discussions related to PVM there is a newsgroup
  called comp.parallel.pvm.


  In addition to PVM you only need the gcc C compiler to build the april
  compiler and support libraries.


Contact:


  Please direct any e-mail (questions, bug reports, comments, suggestions,
  etc.) to:
                erlebach@informatik.tu-muenchen.de


WARNING:


  This article will be reposted to this newsgroup every week by an automated
  posting program until at least twenty people have downloaded the APRIL
  compiler package and sent comments via e-mail. ;)


  (just kidding, really!)
--

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