Parallel execution of equational programs

Equational programming is a style of declarative programming with very simple semantics, based on logical consequences, which coincides with the traditional semantics of mathematical expressions. Sequential evaluation strategies for such programs are well known. However, not much seems to be known about evaluating equational programs on parallel computers. An overview is presented of a research project initiated for developing compilation and execution techniques for parallel evaluation of equational programs. Topics discussed include the following: the case for lazy evaluation; path sequential systems and parallel evaluation; parallelism in equational programs; automatic extraction of parallelism; and load balancing and load estimation.