ftp://sisal.llnl.gov/pub/sisal Sisal - A High Performance, Portable, Parallel Programming Language <abstract> The objectives of the Sisal Language Project are to develop high-performance functional compilers and runtime systems to simplify the process of writing scientific programs on parallel supercomputers and to help programmers develop functional scientific applications. Functional languages, such as Sisal, promote the construction of correct parallel programs by isolating the programmer from the complexities of parallel processing. Based on the principles of mathematics, Sisal exposes implicit parallelism through data independence and guarantees determinate results. A Sisal source program is translated into one or more machine independent dataflow graphs which contain all the information regarding the input/output dependencies among the operators that make up the program. These dependencies constitute the only inhibitions to parallel execution. The Optimizing Sisal Compiler can make judgements about how to partition a program for parallel execution based on these graphs, which contain complete knowledge of the program's potential parallism. <environment> In general, Sisal and its support software run under the Unix operating System on any single- or multiple-processor computer system that operates under the shared memory programming model. Mature Sisal systems exist for the following systems: CRAY 2, X/MP, Y/MP, and C-90 SGI 340 Iris Convex C2 Sequent Symmetry Encore Multimax Sun and Sparc RS6000 IBM PC Macintosh. Prototype systems exist or are in work for the Intel Paragon and nCube 2000. <keywords>functional language; parallel programming language; dependence analysis <category>ppt-pplang <description><url>http://www.llnl.gov/sisal/SisalHomePage.html</url> <contact>John Feo / feo@diego.llnl.gov <contact>Tom DeBoni / deboni@llnl.gov </urc>