A foundation for an efficient multi-threaded scheme system

ABSTRACT

We have built a parallel dialect of Scheme called STING that differs from its contemporaries in a number of important respects. STING is intended to be used as an operating system substrate for modern parallel programming languages. The basic concurrency management objects is STING are first-class lightweight threads of control and virtual processors (VPs). Unlike high-level concurrency structures, STING threads and VPs are not encumbered by complex synchronization protocols. Threads and VPs are manipualted in the same way as any other Scheme structure. STING separates thread policy decisions from thread implementation ones. Implementations of different parallel languages built on top of STING can define their own scheduling and migration policies without requiring modification to the runtime system or the provided interface. Process migration and scheduling can be customized by applications on a per-VP basis. The semantics and implementation of threads minimizes the cost of thread creation, and puts a premium on storage locality. The storage management policies in STING lead to better cache and page utilization, and allows users to experiment with a variety of different execution regimes—from fully delayed to completely eager evaluation.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.2 Language Classifications

          Nouns: SCHEME

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.1 PROGRAMMING TECHNIQUES
      D.1.3 Concurrent Programming
          Subjects: Parallel programming
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.4 Processors
          Subjects: Optimization

General Terms:
Languages, Performance