MultiLisp

<h2 id="pcall-and-future">PCALL and FUTURE</h2>
<p>MultiLisp achieves parallelism with the PCALL <a href="/facts/Macro_(computer_science)/7abAsm1o">macro</a>, where
</p><p>(PCALL Fun A B C ...)
</p><p>is equivalent to
</p><p>(Fun A B C ...)
</p><p>except that the <a href="/facts/Parameter_(computer_programming)/LcuLbbSq">arguments</a> A, B, C, etc. are explicitly allowed to be evaluated in parallel; this circumvents the usual order of evaluation, which is sequential and left to right. It also makes use of a parallel programming construct called <a href="/facts/Future_(programming)/5Mpgxv4m">futures</a>, which resembles <a href="/facts/Fork_(system_call)/M1jtvaT4">forking</a>, combined with <a href="/facts/Lazy_evaluation/mD3DxDkc">lazy evaluation</a>. Using this construct, an expression such as
</p><p>(<a href="/facts/Cons/KTYIDGwz">cons</a> (FUTURE A) (FUTURE B))
</p><p>can be written, which will overlap the evaluation of the expressions A and B, not only with each other, but with computations that use the result of the <a href="/facts/Cons/KTYIDGwz">cons</a> call, until an operation is performed that needs correct information about the value of A or B.
</p>
<h2 id="see-also">See also</h2>
<ul><li><a href="/facts/Speculative_evaluation/AkA84o5n">Speculative evaluation</a></li></ul>

<ul><li>Halstead, Robert H. Jr. (October 1985). <a href="https://doi.org/10.1145%2F4472.4478">"MultiLisp: A Language for Concurrent Symbolic Computation"</a>. <i><a href="/facts/ACM_Transactions_on_Programming_Languages_and_Systems/nk6hTKJI">ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems</a></i>. 7 (4): 501–538. <a href="/facts/Doi_(identifier)/muM9Etpq">doi</a>:<a href="https://doi.org/10.1145%2F4472.4478">10.1145/4472.4478</a>. <a href="/facts/S2CID_(identifier)/ldJsHa2Y">S2CID</a> <a href="https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:1285424">1285424</a>.</li>
<li>Koomen, Johannes A. G. M. (1980). <i>The Interlisp Virtual Machine: A Study of its Design and its Implementation as Multilisp</i> (MSc). University of British Columbia.</li>
<li>Bates, Raymond L.; Dyer, David; Koomen, Johannes A. G. M. (15–18 August 1982). "Implementation of Interlisp on the VAX". <i>LFP '82 Proceedings of the 1982 ACM symposium on LISP and functional programming</i>. ACM symposium on LISP and functional programming. <a href="/facts/Pittsburgh/42yPHyS0">Pittsburgh</a>, Pennsylvania, United States. pp. 81–87.</li>
<li>Halstead, Robert H. Jr. (1984). <i>The MultiLisp Language: Lisp for a Multiprocessor</i>. Conference on 5th Generation Computers. Tokyo, Japan.</li>
<li>Martins, W.S. "Parallel Implementations of Functional Languages". <i>Proceedings of the 4th Int. Workshop on the Parallel Implementation of Functional Languages</i>: 92.</li>
<li>Skillicorn, David B.; Talia, Domenico (June 1998). <a href="https://doi.org/10.1145%2F280277.280278">"Models and languages for parallel computation"</a>. <i><a href="/facts/ACM_Computing_Surveys/18Itftvp">ACM Computing Surveys</a></i>. 30 (2): 123–169. <a href="/facts/Doi_(identifier)/muM9Etpq">doi</a>:<a href="https://doi.org/10.1145%2F280277.280278">10.1145/280277.280278</a>. <a href="/facts/S2CID_(identifier)/ldJsHa2Y">S2CID</a> <a href="https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:9308854">9308854</a>.</li></ul>

<h2 id="references">References</h2>

<ol>
<li id="fn:1"><p>WikiSysop; Mikaelm; Bjlucier; Thedens, Dan (2019-02-06). "Gambit". Retrieved 2019-04-21. <a href="http://dynamo.iro.umontreal.ca/wiki/index.php/Main_Page" target="_blank">http://dynamo.iro.umontreal.ca/wiki/index.php/Main_Page</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
</ol>

MultiLisp open-in-new

MultiLisp