On 04.11.2008, at 20:07, Mark H. wrote: > Long answer: SISAL is an example of a functional parallel language
Ah, right, there was SISAL... unfortunately long forgotten. > One could express solving linear systems (which is what I presume you > mean by "matrix inversion," unless you really want the entries of the > inverse) in a purely functional way using a language like SISAL with a > compiler that optimizes away temporaries, and the resulting Could one? That was actually the core of my question. Of course HPC applications would require smart compilers that, but first of all there must be a purely functional algorithm that can be transformed automatically into an efficient one. Do you know any references to such algorithms in linear algebra? Of course, HPC applications dealing with large data sets would always want algorithms that modify matrices in place instead of allocating more memory. I don't expect a purely OO HPC world any time soon. But it would still be interesting to know how many of the traditional CPU- hungry algorithms already have known efficient functional equivalents. > That was basically why SISAL didn't take off at Livermore. HPC coders > do, however, write a lot of control code, scripts, etc. that can > benefit from FP. This is why I follow Clojure (for example). Me too. HPC is only one aspect of my work. And I think languages like Clojure can be useful for generating specialized HPC code as well, just like FFTW uses Caml code for generating C routines. Konrad. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
