Abstract
TransPive is a distributed Lisp system that originally ran on a Transputers network. The system simulates a shared object space, supporting remote pointers with a distributed object manager and a distributed Garbage Collector (GC). A future primitive, with an explicit touch operation, is provided to spawn remote tasks.
This paper presents a new version of TransPive, running on a TCP/IP network using PVM as the communication layer. This version supports a new causal ordering, a different object manager (based on causal broadcasts), a new GC, and a different implementation of the message-sending primitives.
Some applications have been run on both versions, showing important lessons on distributed language implementation. We show here a parallel triangulation application with its results.
Some conclusions are drawn from the experience, mainly the need for first class threads (treated as objects), an object-oriented language and very simple GCs.
This work has been partially funded by FONDECYT project 1950599.
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Piquer, J.M. (1996). A re-implementation of TransPive: Lessons from the experience. In: Ito, T., Halstead, R.H., Queinnec, C. (eds) Parallel Symbolic Languages and Systems. PSLS 1995. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1068. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0023070
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0023070
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