A High Performance Runtime System for Parallel Evaluation of Lazy Languages

: is a system for parallel evaluation of lazy functional programs implemented on a Sequent Symmetry. The distinguishing features of over previous implementations are propagation of Normal Form demand and memory reclamation via reference counting. In an earlier paper, the validity of these ideas was established based on a preliminary implementation. Our experience, based on extensive experimentation with this implementation, led to the design and implementation of a new high-performance runtime system for described in this paper. We discuss the rationale behind the various design choices and provide quantitative evidence for the validity of these choices. Keywords: Lazy Functional Languages, Implementation, Parallelism, Performance Evaluation 1 Introduction Functional languages offer a conceptually simple approach to programming parallel computers. Detection and exploitation of parallelism in functional programs is simpler than in imperative programs, due to referential transparency. T..