BaLinda Lisp: A parallel list-processing language

Abstract

The authors describe BaLinda (Biddle and Linda) Lisp, a parallel execution Lisp dialect designed to take advantage of the architectural capabilities of BIDDLE (bidirectional data driven lisp engine). The FUTURE construct is used to initiate parallel execution threads, which may communicate through Linda-like commands operating on a tuple space. These features provide good support for parallel execution, and blend together well with notational consistency and simplicity. Unstructured task initiation and termination commands are avoided, while mandatory and speculative parallelisms (lazy versus eager executions) are both supported.