Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog,comp.constraints
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!udel!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!Germany.EU.net!Munich.Germany.EU.net!ecrc!news
From: joachim@ecrc.de (Joachim Schimpf)
Subject: ECLiPSe 3.5.1 / Parallel ECLiPSe
Message-ID: <D57y5s.BI3@ecrc.de>
Sender: news@ecrc.de
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Organization: European Computer-Industry Research Centre GmbH, Munich, Germany
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 1995 09:53:51 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.lang.prolog:12431 comp.constraints:571

ECLiPSe 3.5.1
-------------
We are pleased to announce the availability of ECLiPSe 3.5.1, the first
public release of _Parallel_ECLiPSe_ . Even if you are not interested
in parallelism, we recommend to get this new version in order to take
advantage of other new features and bug fixes.

ECLiPSe is a generic development system for Constraint Logic Programming
(CLP) and Prolog. It comes with a number of ready-to-use constraint solver
libraries, while providing all the necessary lower-level hooks to implement
new or derived solvers.

Parallelism
-----------
This release implements or-parallelism on shared-memory multiprocessor
platforms (currently tested on parallel SparcStations, ICL DRS6000
and SGI Onyx).

The main objective is to speed up typical CLP applications by
combining constraint-based pruning with parallel exploration of large
search spaces. For the programmer, parallelizing an application is
achieved by simply adding some :- parallel annotations, or by
replacing e.g. a sequential indomain/1 by its parallel counterpart
par_indomain/1.

The number of parallel processes taking part in a computation can be
flexibly adjusted even while an application is running. This makes
it possible to either reduce the load on a parallel machine or to
take advantage of idle processors when they become available.
Note that it is of course possible to try parallel ECLiPSe on a
single-processor machine, simulating parallelism by multitasking.

In the future, we hope to be able to provide a parallel system
for networks of workstations/PCs.

Finite Set Constraint Solver
----------------------------
This release includes the new library Conjunto (by Carmen Gervet,
carmen@ecrc.de), a system to solve set constraints over finite set
domain terms. It is particularly suited to tackle set-based
applications in combinatorial mathematics and operations research,
where it provides for natural and generic modeling and good efficiency.
The Extension Manual contains more detailed information.

Other News
----------

** The finite domain solver now supports domains of arbitrary ground terms.

** The database subsystem can now deal with several open databases at once
   via the new ondb/2 built-in. The multiuser database system has been
   simplified and should be easier to use now.

** User Manual and Extension Manual have been updated. The main additions
   are chapters about parallelism and about the Conjunto library.
   The postscript manuals are now formatted in a way that prints reasonably
   on both US and European paper formats.

** (Hopefully) simplified installation procedure.

** Numerous bug fixes.

Availability
------------
If you don't have an ECLiPSe license yet, have a look at:

	http://www.ecrc.de/eclipse/eclipse.html

for ordering information, or email to eclipse_request@ecrc.de.

If you already have an ECLiPSe license, you can just ftp the new
version from our ftp server:

	ftp.ecrc.de (141.1.1.1) under /eclipse/3.5.1

This release is available for the following architectures:

Sun3/SunOs4		(no parallel version)
Sparc/SunOs4
Sparc/SunOs5
ICL DRS6000/SVR4
HP 9000s700/HPUX	(no parallel version yet)
PC/SunOs5
Motorola Delta 88k/SVR4	(no parallel version yet)
IBM RS6000/AIX		(no parallel version yet)
SGI/IRIX

The PC/Linux version will follow in the next weeks, we currently
have no machine to produce the binaries.

As usual, report bugs and problems to eclipse_bugs@ecrc.de.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 ECLiPSe WWW pages:		http://www.ecrc.de/eclipse/eclipse.html
 ECLiPSe FTP site:		ftp.ecrc.de  (141.1.1.1)  /eclipse
 User group mailing list contributions:		eclipse_users@ecrc.de
 Orders and mailing list administration:	eclipse_request@ecrc.de
 ECLiPSe development team:			eclipse@ecrc.de
 Bug reports:					eclipse_bugs@ecrc.de


