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.

This volume contains the proceedings of an international workshop on parallelism in inference systems held in Germany in December 1990. The topicof the workshop is still rather young and several papers in the book are overview articles intended to provide a first orientation toward some of the more intensively investigated subtopics. The main part of the book is a compilation of research papers on parallelization in special domains ofinference such as rewriting, automatic reasoning, logic programming, andconnectionist inference. Appended to the book is a collection of short project summaries received in response to a worldwide email call. The book is intended primarily for researchers working on inference systems who are interested in parallelizing their systems.

This book is one of the first to address the problem of forming useful parallelism from potential parallelism and to provide a general solution. The book presents two approaches to automatic partitioning and scheduling so that the same parallel program can be made to execute efficiently on widely different multiprocessors. The first approach is based on a macro dataflow model in which the program is partitioned into tasks at compile time and the tasks are scheduled on processors at run time. The second approach is based on a compile time scheduling model, where both the partitioning and scheduling are performed at compile time. Both approaches have been implemented in partition programs written in the single assignment language SISAL. The inputs to the partitioning and scheduling algorithms are a graphical representation of the parallel program and a list of parameters describing the target multiprocessor. Execution profile information is used to derive compile-time estimates of execution times and data sizes in the program. Both the macro dataflow and compile-time scheduling problems are expressed as optimization problems and are shown to be NP complete in the strong sense. Efficient approximation algorithms for these problems are presented. Finally, the effectiveness of the partitioning and scheduling algorithms is studied by multiprocessor simulations of various SISAL benchmark programs for different target multiprocessor parameters. Vivek Sarkar is a Member of Research Staff at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. Partitioning and Scheduling Parallel Programs for Multiprocessing is included in the series Research Monographs in Parallel and Distributed Computing. Copublished with Pitman Publishing.

This text provides an excellent balance of theory and application that enables you to deploy powerful algorithms, frameworks, and methodologies to solve complex optimization problems in a diverse range of industries. Each chapter is written by leading experts in the fields of parallel and distributed optimization. Collectively, the contributions serve as a complete reference to the field of combinatorial optimization, including details and findings of recent and ongoing investigations.

This volume contains selected papers presented at the Eighth Logic Programming Conference, held in Tokyo, 1989. Various topics in logic programming are covered. The first paper is an invited talk by Prof. Donald Michie, Chief Scientist of the Turing Institute, entitled "Human and Machine Learning of Descriptive Concepts", and introduces various research results on learning obtained by his group. There are eleven further papers, organized into sections on reasoning, logic programming language, concurrent programming, knowledge programming, natural language processing, and applications. A paper on knowledge programming introduces a flexible and powerful tool for incorporating and organizing knowledge using hypermedia. Another paper presents the constraint logic programming language cu-Prolog, designed for combinatorial problems; the way cu-Prolog solves the constraints is based on program transformation.

Containing over 300 entries in an A-Z format, the Encyclopedia of Parallel Computing provides easy, intuitive access to relevant information for professionals and researchers seeking access to any aspect within the broad field of parallel computing. Topics for this comprehensive reference were selected, written, and peer-reviewed by an international pool of distinguished researchers in the field. The Encyclopedia is broad in scope, covering machine organization, programming languages, algorithms, and applications. Within each area, concepts, designs, and specific implementations are presented. The highly-structured essays in this work comprise synonyms, a definition and discussion of the topic, bibliographies, and links to related literature. Extensive cross-references to other entries within the Encyclopedia support efficient, user-friendly searchers for immediate access to useful information. Key concepts presented in the Encyclopedia of Parallel Computing include; laws and metrics; specific numerical and non-numerical algorithms; asynchronous algorithms; libraries of subroutines; benchmark suites; applications; sequential consistency and cache coherency; machine classes such as clusters, shared-memory multiprocessors, special-purpose machines and dataflow machines; specific machines such as Cray supercomputers, IBM’s cell processor and Intel’s multicore machines; race detection and auto parallelization; parallel programming languages, synchronization primitives, collective operations, message passing libraries, checkpointing, and operating systems. Topics covered: Speedup, Efficiency, Isoefficiency, Redundancy, Amdahls law, Computer Architecture Concepts, Parallel Machine Designs, Benmarks, Parallel Programming concepts & design, Algorithms, Parallel applications. This authoritative reference will be published in two formats: print and online. The online edition features hyperlinks to cross-references and to additional significant research. Related Subjects: supercomputing, high-performance computing, distributed computing

This volume contains the papers which have been accepted for presentation atthe Third International Symposium on Programming Language Implementation andLogic Programming (PLILP '91) held in Passau, Germany, August 26-28, 1991. The aim of the symposium was to explore new declarative concepts, methods and techniques relevant for the implementation of all kinds of programming languages, whether algorithmic or declarative ones. The intention was to gather researchers from the fields of algorithmic programming languages as well as logic, functional and object-oriented programming. This volume contains the two invited talks given at the symposium by H. Ait-Kaci and D.B. MacQueen, 32 selected papers, and abstracts of several system demonstrations. The proceedings of PLILP '88 and PLILP '90 are available as Lecture Notes in Computer Science Volumes 348 and 456.