Eden – Parallel Functional Programming with Haskell

Abstract

Eden is a parallel functional programming language which extends Haskell with constructs for the definition and instantiation of parallel processes. Processes evaluate function applications remotely in parallel. The programmer has control over process granularity, data distribution, communication topology, and evaluation site, but need not manage synchronisation and data exchange between processes. The latter are performed by the parallel runtime system through implicit communication channels, transparent to the programmer. Common and sophisticated parallel communication patterns and topologies, so-called algorithmic skeletons, are provided as higher-order functions in a user-extensible skeleton library written in Eden. Eden is geared toward distributed settings, i.e. processes do not share any data, but can equally well be used on multicore systems. This tutorial gives an up-to-date introduction into Eden’s programming methodology based on algorithmic skeletons, its language constructs, and its layered implementation on top of the Glasgow Haskell compiler.KeywordsRuntime SystemDynamic ChannelParent ProcessRemote DataProcess AbstractionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.