Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog
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From: tarau@IRO.UMontreal.CA (Paul Tarau)
Subject: Re: MT-safe Prolog
Message-ID: <D73LJ1.A0o@IRO.UMontreal.CA>
Sender: news@IRO.UMontreal.CA
Organization: Universite de Moncton, Canada
References: <3mo687Eold@uni-erlangen.de>
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 1995 22:37:48 GMT
Lines: 37

In article <3mo687Eold@uni-erlangen.de> tsruland@immd8.informatik.uni-erlangen.de (Tobias Ruland) writes:
>
>is there a MT-safe prolog? i'm using QP3.2 (solaris) but
>the quintus technical support told me that MT-safeness is
>planned for future releases...
>
>is there a MT-safe prolog compiler
>here and now and today??

BinProlog 3.30 has been tested and runs quite well on 4 and 8
processor Sparcs with Solaris 2.x. 
The engine uses a relatively pure C-programming style and 
exclusively read-only global data. The Linda-extension Multi-BinProlog
implemented by Koen De Bosschere actually takes advantage of
Solaris threads. With this model, super-scalar speed-up is possible. 
The restrictions I remember of were to keep all I/O activity in 
in the same thread and to keep state information on the
(semaphore protected) Linda blackboard.

As more and more Solaris libraries get MT-safe you should 
expect that more and more C-based Prologs already are or
will be MT-safe in the near future.

BinProlog's C-translator should also generate MT-safe code
which is interesting if you want to embed it in an already MT-safe
application.

You can get BinProlog by ftp or with a WWW tool from
ftp://clement.info.umoncton.ca/BinProlog.

Look for the Solaris binaries in directory bin,
for Multi-BinProlog in directory multi and for
dynamically linked Solaris standalone user programs
in directory dynpl2c.

Paul Tarau

