Irvine Dataflow (Id) is a general-purpose parallel programming language, started at the University of California at Irvine in 1975[1] by Arvind and K. P. Gostelow.[2] Arvind continued work with Id at MIT into the 1990s.
The major subset of Id is a purely functional programming language with non-strict semantics. Features include: higher-order functions, a Milner-style statically type-checked polymorphic type system with overloading, user defined types and pattern matching, and prefix and infix operators. It led to the development of pH, a parallel dialect of Haskell.
Id programs are fine grained implicitly parallel.
The MVar synchronisation variable abstraction in Haskell is based on Id's M-structures.[3]
Examples
editId supports algebraic datatypes, similar to ML, Haskell, or Miranda:
type bool = False | True;
Types are inferred by default, but may be annotated with a typeof
declaration. Type variables use the syntax *0
, *1
, etc.
typeof id = *0 -> *0; def id x = x;
A function which uses an array comprehension to compute the first Fibonacci numbers:
typeof fib_array = int -> (array int); def fib_array n = { A = { array (0,n) of | [0] = 0 | [1] = 1 | [i] = A[i-1] + A[i-2] || i <- 2 to n } In A };
Note the use of non-strict evaluation in the recursive definition of the array A
.
Id's lenient evaluation strategy allows cyclic datastructures by default. The following code makes a cyclic list, using the cons operator :
.
def cycle x = { A = x : A In A };
However, to avoid nonterminating construction of truly infinite structures, explicit delays must be annotated using #
:
def count_up_from x = x :# count_up_from (x + 1);
Implementations
edit- pHluid
- The pHluid system was a research implementation of Id programming language, with future plans for a front-end for pH, a parallel dialect of the Haskell programming language, implemented at Digital's Cambridge Research Laboratory. and non-profit use. It is targeted at standard Unix workstation hardware.
References
edit- ^ Sharp, J.A. (1992). Data Flow Computing: Theory and Practice. Intellect, Limited. p. 125. ISBN 9780893919214. Retrieved 2014-12-02.
- ^ Arvind; Gostelow, Kim P.; Plouffe, Wil (1978). "The (preliminary) Id report: an asynchronous programming language and computing machine (revised)". Technical Report TR-114, Department of Information and Computer Science, University of California, Irvine.
- ^ "Concurrent Haskell". Peyton-Jones, Gordon and Finne. POPL 1996.
External links
edit- ID Language Reference Manual, Rishiyur S. Nikhil, 1991.
- "An Asynchronous Programming Language for a Large Multiprocessor Machine", Arvind et al., TR114a, Dept ISC, UC Irvine, Dec 1978