1994 Area Report
Parallelism and Implementation Technologies
Manuel Hermenegildo (Coordinator).
Facultad de Informatica.
Technical University of Madrid (UPM).
Area activities in 1994 continued along the lines set up in the previous
year:
- organization of the area meeting
- updating the area description information
- information gathering from centers working in computational logic
implementation and parallelism inside and outside the EU
- providing area input to the newsletter
- management of the area mailing list and WWW information
A summary of the activities/results in these areas is given below.
Plans for next year include continuation of the 1994 activities,
including the organization of the area meeting. The date of the
meeting has not been fixed yet but it will be either in conjunction
with PLILP'95 in Utrecht (the Netherlands), September 20-22, 1995, or
in Madrid, earlier in the year.
In addition, special emphasis will be put on completing the Area WWW
pages and linking them to the central Compulog-Net sites.
1.- Area Meeting Report
The 1994 COMPULOG-NET Area Meeting on Parallelism and Implementation
Technologies was held in Madrid, on September 17, 1994, following
ALP/PLILP'94, held also in Madrid. Papers were invited describing work
on any topic related to Implementation Techniques, Foundations of
Parallelism and Concurrency, Abstract Machines, Compilation methods,
Program Optimization, Sequential and Parallel Execution Models,
Automatic Parallelization, Concurrent/Parallel Languages, Performance
Evaluation Methodologies and Studies, Experiences in the
Implementation of Systems, etc. The papers presented at the meeting are
available.
2.- Area Description Update
The objective of the area is to serve as a communications vehicle for
members interested in subjects related to the implementation of
Computational Logic systems, from basic technologies to practical
issues. The transfer to and exploitation of such technology by
industry and the general application of Computational Logic are also
issues of central interest of the area.
Topics include: Implementation techniques, Foundations of parallelism
and concurrency, Abstract Machines, Compilation methods, Program
Optimization, Parallel Execution Models, Automatic Parallelization,
Concurrent/Parallel languages, Performance Evaluation methodologies
and studies, etc.
Activities that are specific to the area include an annual meeting and
the compulognet-parimp@dia.fi.upm.es mailing list. Our main objective
with these activities is to improve information flow in the area. As
mentioned in the previous issue, and in order to make it as easy as
possible for people to attend the annual meeting, this year's meeting
was held in Madrid in adjacent in time with ALP/PLILP'94 (held in
Madrid). A brief report on this meeting is included in this issue of
the newsletter.
We also hope to contribute to the distribution of Computational Logic
systems, manuals, benchmarks, etc. through the use of the Compulog Net
ftp services as centralized repositories of the above (or, at least,
pointers to them), in addition to the usual role of such services in
the distribution of abstracts of publications in the area.
If you would like to to have your node included in the official roster
of the Area and the mailing list, please simply send a message to
compulognet-parimp-request@dia.fi.upm.es with relevant data (email
address at the minimum, but, preferably, also phone number, physical
address, and a brief description of your node, activities, and
interests).
3.- Information from centers working in computational logic
implementation and parallelism inside and outside the EU
Node Information Report (European)
SICS, the Swedish Institute of Computer Science
Thomas Sjoeland, Sverker Jansson, Seif Haridi,
Roland Karlsson, and Mats Carlsson
This report describes the work in progress at SICS in the Compulog
areas of implementation and parallelism. Two groups at SICS work in
this area:
- LPA
- Logic Programming Technology and Applications, group leader: Mats Carlsson, matsc@sics.se
- CCP
- Concurrent Constraint Programming,group leader: Sverker Janson, sverker@sics.se
Node Information Report (Non-European)
Laboratory For Logic, Databases,
and
Advanced Programming
Department of Computer Science
New Mexico State University
The Laboratory:
The Laboratory for Logic, Database, and Advanced Programming is a
newly established laboratory within the Department of Computer
Science, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico, USA.
The Laboratory conducts research in the areas of Logic Programming,
Deductive Databases, Object-oriented Databases, Programming Languages,
and Parallel Processing. The Laboratory aims to become one of the
premier centers of research in these areas. The Laboratory is headed
by Professors Gopal Gupta and Hector J. Hernandez of the Computer
Science Department, and has about five Ph.D. Students, four master's
students and several undergraduate students associated with it.
The Equipment:
The Laboratory owns a 4 processor Sun Sparc 10 running Sun Solaris OS,
3 Sun Classics and a number of NCD X-terminals. In addition, it has a
Sparc laser writer and a color HP inkjet printer. The Laboratory also
has direct access to a 20 processor Sequent Symmetry owned by NMSU CS
Department, and to a number of other multiprocessors (Hypercubes,
Connection Machines, KSR, etc.). The Laboratory has access to various
state-of-the-art software packages: ObjectStore, an object-oriented
database system, C and C++ development environments, Eclipse Prolog
system, Quintus Prolog, SICStus Prolog, etc.
Research Support:
The Laboratory has over $500,000 in research funds, a majority of
which comes from NSF. Additional funding comes from Sandia National
Labs, NATO, AT&T, and CIMD. The Laboratory is looking for Master's and
Ph.D. students to do research involving Databases, Logic Programming,
and Parallel Processing. Research Assistantships are available.
Research Projects:
The Laboratory is engaged in a number of research projects. Members of
the Laboratory are investigating optimization of deductive database
queries so that they can be processed more efficiently. They are also
investigating schemes for parallel execution of queries on
multiprocessors so that minimum amount of communication is required
during their evaluation. The Laboratory is also interested in
integration of deductive and object-oriented databases. All these
projects raise a number of very interesting and challenging
theoretical and practical issues. Members of the Laboratory are also
conducting research in building high performance parallel logic
programming systems (parallel Prolog systems) that can take full
advantage of multiprocessor architectures. Currently, implementation
is under way on a 20 processor Sequent Symmetry. Researchers in the
Laboratory are also working on a project that uses advanced logic
programming techniques for constructing state-of-the-art parallelizing
Fortran compilers. The research conducted by the members of the
Laboratory has been published in internationally reputed journals such
as Journal of the ACM, ACM Transaction on Database Systems, ACM
Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, and The Journal of
Logic Programming. The Laboratory actively collaborates with other
research groups around the world. In particular, it has strong ties
with groups in Bristol (England), Madrid (Spain), Monterrey (Mexico),
Montreal (Canada), Oporto (Portugal), and Stockholm
(Sweden). Recently, the Laboratory hosted a workshop on Parallel Logic
Programming attended by researchers from many of the collaborating
institutions.
The Department and University
The Computer Science Department, of which the laboratory is a part,
consists of 15 faculty and about 70 graduate students. The department
has excellent computing facilities of its own. In addition to
Databases, Logic Programming, Programming Languages, and Parallel
Processing, the department's faculty conducts research in Theoretical
Computer Science, Computer Architecture, Performance Evaluation,
Artificial Intelligence, Computational Linguistics, Networks,
Programming Systems, and Operating Systems.
New Mexico State University is a premier research University in the
USA, with current research grants and contracts in excess of 300
million dollars. The University has about 16,000 graduate and
undergraduate students.
The Surroundings:
Las Cruces is multi-cultural city in Southern New Mexico with a
population of 65,000. It has excellent sunny climate all year round,
and is known for its excellent New Mexican cuisine. Opportunities for
recreation abound. Las Cruces is only an hour's drive from El Paso,
Texas, and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Las Cruces is in close proximity to
the White Sands Missile Range and NASA's White Sands Test
Facility. The cost of living in Las Cruces is quite reasonable.
Information:
For more information write to:
Prof. Hector J. Hernandez or Gopal Gupta
Laboratory for Logic, Database, and Advanced Programming
Box 30001/CS, New Mexico State University,
Las Cruces, NM 88003-0001
Phone: (505) 646 6236; Fax: (505) 646-6218
4.- Input to the newsletter
Area information was provided for the two issues of the newsletter
including area updates, area meeting report, node descriptions,
conference reports, meeting plans, recent PhD updates, etc.
5.- Management of the area mailing list and WWW information
The area mailing list has been maintained as usual. Development of WWW
pages has started and is expected to be completed by the next
reporting period.
webmaster@clip.dia.fi.upm.es