Parallelizing algorithms for symbolic computation using MAPLE

Abstract

||MAPLE|| (speak: parallel Maple) is a portable system for parallel symbolic computation. The system is built as an interface between the parallel declarative programming language Strand and the sequential computer algebra system Maple, thus providing the elegance of Strand and the power of the existing sequential algorithms in Maple. The implementation of different parallel programming paradigms shows that it is fairly easy to parallelize even complex algebraic algorithms using this system. Sample applications (among them algorithms solving multivariate nonlinear equation systems) are implemented on various parallel architectures. For example a straightforward parallelization of the complex and important problem of real root isolation has been parallelized using a generic Strand program of fewer than 20 lines of code and a slight modification of 5 lines in the original sequential Maple source. Even with such a simple modification we gained a speed-up of 5 times, that is better than those reported by others in the literature.