Newsgroups: comp.sys.transputer
From: fraber@cs.tu-berlin.de (Frank Bergmann)
Subject: Re: Parallel Prolog
Keywords: prolog, parallel, transputer, csp
Organization: Technical University of Berlin, Germany
Date: 9 Aug 1994 13:04:04 GMT
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Message-ID: <327us4$7j7@news.cs.tu-berlin.de>

siamakr@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Siamak Rezaei) writes:

>Could you please elaborate on type of message passing (channel, stream
>...).

The BAP communication scheme is based on a Low Level Message Passing System. Fixed sized blocks (up to 1kB) are routed using a shortest path routing table that is calculated on system startup time. Therefore one can either define a topology 'by hand' or use a worm to explore the current network topology.

On top of the Low Level Router several message passing layers implement a high level message passing system that is able to transfer any valid Prolog term (of any length).

Main advantage of this concept is the separation of the toplogy dependent parts of the communication from the application based parts. The Low Level Router may later be ported to different hardware platforms.

Frank Bergmann, BAS

