Highly parallel machines have been available for many years but, because advances in hardware have always outpaced progress in software development, designers and users of these machines have yet to realize their full potential. Until recently there have been few, if any, high-class parallel programming languages that could be implemented on the wide variety of parallel processing systems in use. This book helps to redress the balance by teaching programming techniques as well as performance analysis of parallel programming languages and architectures using logic programming; specifically, it focuses on the Prolog-like languages OR-parallel Prolog and AND-parallel FGHC. Parallel Logic Programmingbrings to light practical applications of a previously esoteric/theoretical area of parallel logic programming and is unique in presenting programming hand-in-hand with performance analysis of real empirical measurements. Its quantitative approach to symbolic parallel programming provides students and professionals with tools for implementing and critically evaluating larger projects. The book includes useful chapter summaries, programming projects, and a glossary.

P-Prolog is put forward as an alternative proposal to the difficulties faced in the main research areas of parallel logic programmings, which have been studied. P-Prolog provides the advantages of guarded Horn clauses while retaining don't know non-determinism where required. This monograph presents also an or-tree model and an implementation scheme for it, to combine and- and or- parallelism with reasonable efficiency. The model and implementation scheme discussed can be applied to P-Prolog and other parallel logic languages.

Multiprocessor Execution of Logic Programs addresses the problem of efficient implementation of logic programming languages, specifically Prolog, on multiprocessor architectures. The approaches and implementations developed attempt to take full advantage of sequential implementation technology developed for Prolog (such as the WAM) while exploiting all forms of control parallelism present in logic programs, namely, or-parallelism, independent and-parallelism and dependent and-parallelism. Coverage includes a thorough survey of parallel implementation techniques and parallel systems developed for Prolog. Multiprocessor Execution of Logic Programs is recommended for people implementing parallel logic programming systems, parallel symbolic systems, parallel AI systems, and parallel theorem proving systems. It will also be useful to people who wish to learn about the implementation of parallel logic programming systems.

Constraint Logic Programming (CLP), an area of extreme research interest in recent years, extends the semantics of Prolog in such a way that the combinatorial explosion, a characteristic of most problems in the field of Artificial Intelligence, can be tackled efficiently. By employing solvers dedicated to each domain instead of the unification algorithm, CLP drastically reduces the search space of the problem, which leads to increased efficiency in the execution of logic programs. CLP offers the possibility of solving complex combinatorial problems in an efficient way, and at the same time maintains the advantages offered by the declarativeness of logic programming. The aim of this book is to present parallel and constraint logic programming, offering a basic understanding of the two fields to the reader new to the area. The first part of the book gives an introduction to the fundamental aspects of conventional logic programming which is necessary for understanding the parts that follow. The second part includes an introduction to parallel logic programming, architectures and implementations proposed in the area. Finally, the third part presents the principles of constraint logic programming. The last two parts also include descriptions of the supporting facilities for the two paradigms in two popular systems; ECLIPSe and SICStus. These platforms have been selected mainly because they offer both parallel and constraint features. Annotated and explained examples are also included in the relevant parts, offering a valuable guide and a first practical experience to the reader. Finally, applications of the covered paradigms are presented. The authors felt that a book of this kind should provide some theoretical background necessary for the understanding of the covered logic programming paradigms, and a quick start for the reader interested in writing parallel and constraint logic programming programs. However it is outside the scope of this book to provide a deep theoretical background of the two areas. In that sense, this book is addressed to a public interested in obtaining a knowledge of the domain, without spending the time and effort to understand the extensive theoretical work done in the field – namely postgraduate and advanced undergraduate students in the area of logic programming. This book fills a gap in the current bibliography, since there is no comprehensive book of this level that covers the areas of conventional, parallel, and constraint logic programming. Parallel and Constraint Logic Programming: An Introduction to Logic, Parallelism and Constraints is appropriate for an advanced level course on Logic Programming or Constraints, and as a reference for practitioners and researchers in industry.