ParGCL

GCL is GNU Common LISP. ParGCL (Parallel GCL) provides bindings to MPI for GCL. It also contains higher level abstractions to ease the chore of writing parallel sofware. The software could be ported to other dialects of Common LISP without too much trouble, if one has access either to the source code, or to a foreign function interface for loading C functions and libraries into a running LISP.

ParGCL is free and open source software, available for download.

ParGCL is intended as an easy-to-use master-slave distributed architecture. It combines the feedback of an interactive language (the GCL or AKCL dialect of LISP) with the the use of MPI to take advantage of the ubiquitous networks of PCs. Ease-of-use is emphasized while hoping to maintain reasonable efficiency and a reasonable feature set. This distribution, along with a paper describing it is available by anonymous ftp in the directory /pub/people/gene/pargcl/ at ftp.ccs.neu.edu . If you use this software, please send e-mail to gene@ccs.neu.edu to notify me.

For further information, consult

You may also want to look at TOP-C (Task Oriented Parallel C/C++) for a package offering the same high level abstraction, albeit in C/C++, and with more examples and a more detailed manual.

NOTE: This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants No. CCR-9509783 and CCR-0204113. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.