Parallel architectures for problem solving
The problem of exploiting a large amount of hardware in parallel is one of the biggest challenges facing computer science today. The problem of designing parallel architectures and execution methods for solving large combinatorially explosive problems is studied here. Such problems typically do not have a regular structure that can be readily exploited for parallel execution. Prolog is chosen as a language to specify computation because it is seen as a language that is conceptually simple as well as amenable to parallel interpretation. A tree representation of Prolog computation called the REDUCE-OR tree is described as an alternative to the AND-OR tree representation. A process model based on this representation is developed; it captures more parallelism than most other proposed models. A class of bus architectures is proposed to implement the process model. A general model of parallel Prolog systems is developed and the proposed architectures examined in its framework. One of the important features of the proposed architectures is that they limit contracting of work to a close neighborhood. Various interconnection networks are analyzed, and a new one called the lattice-mesh is proposed. The lattice-mesh improves on the square grid of buses, while retaining its linear-area property. An extensive simulation framework was built. Results of some of the experiments conducted on the simulation system are given.
- Research Organization:
- State Univ. of New York, Stony Brook (USA)
- OSTI ID:
- 5220067
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: Thesis (Ph. D.)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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