Translating from FP to Occam for systolic algorithms

Abstract

Programming multiprocessor systems is not a simple task and is often error-prone. In particular, programming a message-passing parallel computer usually demands large amounts of work in development and debugging to avoid deadlock. It is, therefore, essential to have software to support the task of parallel programming, or more desirably to have automatic parallel program generators to greatly reduce the labour. In this paper, we present a novel method of automatically generating Occam programs; or more precisely, we present an automatic FP-to-Occam translator called AFO. Occam is a parallel, message-passing programming language executed on a network of processors called transputers, but is basically a sequential language extended with primitive parallel and communication constructs. In contrast, FP is a functional language that contains no communication details and supports parallel thinking naturally with higher-level parallel constructs. FP has been used to derive many systolic algorithms. Systolic algorithms can be implemented in Occam as soft-systolic algorithms. With this knowledge, we developed AFO to automatically generate Occam programs from FP programs that have corresponding systolic algorithms, in the hope of generating parallel programs without needing to know the details of low-level communications, and thus greatly improving the productivity of parallel programming.