Book Description

Abstract: "A logic programming system is presented in the paper. The system consists of a Prolog compiler and a run-time kernel. The Prolog compiler translates a Prolog specification directly into C code which may be executed on a sequential workstation or in a workstation cluster. We investigate techniques to generate efficient C code from a Prolog program as well as to provide a convenient interface with external C modules. We implement a parallel control scheme which appears to be particularly suitable for a coarse-grained parallel architecture. Experimental results show that 1) substantial gain in performance can be achieved through proper handling of determinate predicates in a Prolog program; 2) for a sufficiently large program, parallelism can be expolited effectively in a workstation cluster; and 3) an efficient C interface allows us to tackle problems which usually would not be attempted by using Prolog alone. As a sequential Prolog system, the speed of compiled execution of Prolog programs in our system compares favorably to that of Sicstus Prolog."