ParaSail (programming language)
Paradigm | compiled, concurrent, imperative, structured, object-oriented | ||||
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Designed by | S. Tucker Taft | ||||
Developer | AdaCore | ||||
First appeared | 2009 | ||||
Revision 6.3 of alpha release 10 / 16 February 2015 | |||||
strong, static | |||||
OS | Linux, Mac OS X, MS Windows | ||||
.psi .psl | |||||
Website |
www | ||||
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ParaSail, Parallel Specification and Implementation Language, is an object-oriented parallel programming language. The design and ongoing implementation of ParaSail is described in a blog and on its official website.
ParaSail uses a pointer-free programming model, where objects can grow and shrink, and value semantics are used for assignment. There is no global garbage collected heap. Region-based storage management is used throughout. Types can be recursive, so long as the recursive components are declared as optional. There are no global variables, no parameter aliasing, and all subexpressions of an expression can be evaluated in parallel. Assertions, preconditions, postconditions, class invariants, etc., are part of the standard syntax, using a Hoare-like notation. Any possible race conditions are detected at compile time.
The initial design of ParaSail was started in September 2009 by S. Tucker Taft.
Both an interpreter using the ParaSail virtual machine, and an LLVM-based ParaSail compiler are available. Work stealing is used for scheduling ParaSail's light-weight threads. The latest version can be downloaded from the ParaSail website.
Goals
ParaSail goals:
- Pervasive, safe support for implicit and explicit parallelism.
- Compile-time enforcement of assertions, preconditions, postconditions, and class invariants.
- Efficient, pointer-free region-based storage management.
- Familiar class-and-interface-based object-oriented programming model.
Description
The syntax of ParaSail is reminiscent of Modula, but with a class-and-interface-based object-oriented programming model more reminiscent of Java or C#.
More recently the parallel constructs of ParaSail have been adapted for other syntaxes, to produce Java-like, Python-like, and Ada-like parallel languages, dubbed, respectively, Javallel, Parython, and Sparkel (named after the SPARK subset of Ada on which it is based). Compilers and interpreters for these languages are included with the ParaSail implementation (see http://www.parasail-lang.org).
Examples
The following is a Hello world program in ParaSail:
func Hello_World(var IO) is IO.Println("Hello, World"); end func Hello_World;
The following is an interface to a basic map module:
interface BMap<Key_Type is Ordered<>; Element_Type is Assignable<>> is op "[]"() -> BMap; // Create an empty map func Insert(var BMap; Key : Key_Type; Value : Element_Type); func Find(BMap; Key : Key_Type) -> optional Element_Type; func Delete(var BMap; Key : Key_Type); func Count(BMap) -> Univ_Integer; end interface BMap;
Here is a possible implementation of this map module, using a binary tree:
class BMap is interface Binary_Node<> is // A simple "concrete" binary node module var Left : optional Binary_Node; var Right : optional Binary_Node; const Key : Key_Type; var Value : optional Element_Type; // null means deleted end interface Binary_Node; var Tree : optional Binary_Node; var Count := 0; exports op "[]"() -> BMap is // Create an empty map return (Tree => null, Count => 0); end op "[]"; func Insert(var BMap; Key : Key_Type; Value : Element_Type) is // Search for Key, overwrite if found, insert new node if not for M => BMap.Tree loop if M is null then // Not already in the map; add it M := (Key => Key, Value => Value, Left => null, Right => null); BMap.Count += 1; else case Key =? M.Key of [#less] => continue loop with M.Left; [#greater] => continue loop with M.Right; [#equal] => // Key is already in the map; // bump count if Value was null; if M.Value is null then BMap.Count += 1; end if; // in any case overwrite the Value field M.Value := Value; return; end case; end if; end loop; end func Insert; func Find(BMap; Key : Key_Type) -> optional Element_Type is // Search for Key, return associated Value if present, or null otherwise for M => BMap.Tree while M not null loop case Key =? M.Key of [#less] => continue loop with M.Left; [#greater] => continue loop with M.Right; [#equal] => // Found it; return the value return M.Value; end case; end loop; // Not found in BMap return null; end func Find; func Delete(var BMap; Key : Key_Type) is // Search for Key; delete associated node if found for M => BMap.Tree while M not null loop case Key =? M.Key of [#less] => continue loop with M.Left; [#greater] => continue loop with M.Right; [#equal] => // Found it; if at most one subtree is non-null, overwrite // it; otherwise, set its value field to null // (to avoid a more complex re-balancing). if M.Left is null then // Move right subtree into M M <== M.Right; elsif M.Right is null then // Move left subtree into M M <== M.Left; else // Cannot immediately reclaim node; // set value field to null instead. M.Value := null; end if; // Decrement count BMap.Count -= 1; end case; end loop; // Not found in the map end func Delete; func Count(BMap) -> Univ_Integer is // Return count of number of items in map return BMap.Count; end func Count; end class BMap;
Here is a simple test program for the BMap module:
import PSL::Core::Random; import BMap; func Test_BMap(Num : Univ_Integer; Seed : Univ_Integer) is // Test the Binary-Tree-based Map var Ran : Random := Start(Seed); // Start a random-number sequence // Declare a map from integers to strings var M : BMap<Key_Type => Univ_Integer, Element_Type => Univ_String>; M := []; // Initialize the map to the empty map for I in 1..Num*2 forward loop // Add elements to the map const Key := Next(Ran) mod Num + 1; const Val := "Val" | To_String(I); Println("About to insert " | Key | " => " | Val); Insert(M, Key, Val); end loop; Println("Count = " | Count(M)); for I in 1..Num loop // Search for elements in the map const Key := Next(Ran) mod Num + 1; Println("Looking for " | Key | ", found " | Find(M, Key)); end loop; for I in 1..Num/3 loop // Delete some elements from the map const Key := Next(Ran) mod Num + 1; Println("About to delete " | Key); Delete(M, Key); end loop; Println("Count = " | Count(M)); for I in 1..Num forward loop // Search again for elements in the map Println("Looking for " | I | ", found " | Find(M, I)); end loop; end func Test_BMap;
Articles
Articles on ParaSail have appeared in various forums:
- Graham-Rowe, Duncan (28 July 2011). "New Language for Programming in Parallel". Technology Review (MIT).
- Clarke, Peter (28 July 2011). "SofCheck preps ParaSail parallel language". EETimes (UBM Electronics).
- Taft, S. Tucker (9 June 2012). "ParaSail: Less is more with multicore". EETimes (UBM Electronics).
- Selwood, Dick (18 July 2012). "Does the World Need a New Programming Language?". EEJournal (techfocus media, inc.).