P-continuation based implementation of PaiLisp interpreter

Abstract

P-continuation is an extension of Scheme continuation into concurrency, which was introduced in PaiLisp. This paper explains in details the implementation of PaiLisp interpreter based on P-continuations. PaiLisp is a parallelized Scheme based on shared memory architecture, and it is a superset of Multilisp with many concurreny constructs. One of the major contributions of PaiLisp efforts is in extraction of its kernel language PaiLisp-Kernel, which is defined to be Scheme plus four concurrency constructs spawn,suspend,call/cc,exlambda, where ”call/cc“ is an extended call/cc to create P-continuation, a parallel continuation introduced in PaiLisp. [Ito-Matusi 90] shows that all the PaiLisp constructs can be defined using PaiLisp-Kernel.This paper explains the PaiLisp interpreter implemented on a shared memory machine Alliant FX/80 with eight processor elements.The PaiLisp interpreter is featured in use of P-continuation to realise the concurrency constructs of PaiLisp. Experimental results to evaluate the performance of PaiLisp system are also given using several Lisp benchmark programs. Appendix contains a brief description of an experimental PaiLisp compiler.