Newsgroups: comp.parallel.pvm
From: erlebach@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE (Thomas Erlebach)
Subject: ANNOUNCE: Release of APRIL compiler
Organization: Technische Universitaet Muenchen, Germany
Date: 24 Apr 1995 11:24:35 GMT
Message-ID: <3ng1pj$9ce@hpsystem1.informatik.tu-muenchen.de>


                           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!)


