Implementing higher-order Gamma on a massively parallel computer — A case study

Gamma is a kernel programming language with an elegant chemical reaction metaphor in which programs are described in terms of multiset rewriting. Gamma formalism allows one to describe an algorithm without introducing artificial sequentiality and leads to the derivation of a parallel solution to a given problem naturally. However, the difficulty of incorporating control strategies makes Gamma not only hard for one to define any sophisticated approaches but also impossible to reach a decent level of efficiency in any direct implementation. Recently, a higherorder multiset programming paradigm, named higher-order Gamma, is introduced by Metayer to alleviate these problems. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of implementing higherorder Gamma on MasPar, a massively data parallel computer. The results show that a program written in higher-order Gamma can be transformed naturally toward an efficient implementation on a real parallel machine.