Low level Architecture - independence of Glasgow ParallelHaskell ( GpH )

In principle, pure functional languages promise straightforward architecture-independent parallelism. We investigate the validity of this claim in the context of our highly-portable implementation of an implicitly-parallel functional language: the GUM implementation of Glasgow Parallel Haskell (GpH). We focus here on the low-level architecture independence of GUM: the high-level architecture independence of the GpH programming model is discussed elsewhere. Low-level architecture independence is achieved by chosing a message-passing model for GUM, and implementing it using portable C and a widely-supported message-passing library like PVM. In fact GUM is largely independent of the message-passing library, and has been adapted to use MPI and the CM-5 CMMD libraries as well as PVM. As a result, GUM is easily ported, and is currently available on seven platforms including shared-memory machines , distributed-memory machines, and networks of workstations. We provide indicative measurements of the eeciency and speedups delivered by GUM on a range of architectures.