MPP Parallel Haskell - Preliminary Results

MPP Haskell is a parallel implementation of the lazy purely-functional language Haskell for the Thinking Machines Inc. CM-5 large-scale distributed-memory multiprocessor. MPP Haskell is a derivative of GUM, a message-based parallel implementation of Haskell. GUM was carefully designed to minimise performance loss from low-bandwidth and high-latency communications. As an apparent consequence MPP Haskell, with the benefit of high-bandwidth and lowlatency communications, achieves remarkably scalable performance; it appears to be the highest performance higher-order lazy functional language implementation extant. Despite existing inefficiencies in lazy language implementation, considerable performance is recouped by automatic dynamic load balancing. 1 Background Functional programming languages have long been touted as ideal for parallel implementation. Despite this fact, and the existence of numerous functional language implementations, very few parallel implementations have become gen..