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From: bts@unc.UUCP (Bruce Smith)
Newsgroups: net.lang.prolog
Subject: Sequentiality of unification vs. parallel Prolog
Message-ID: <605@unc.unc.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 17-Nov-85 01:19:37 EST
Article-I.D.: unc.605
Posted: Sun Nov 17 01:19:37 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 18-Nov-85 07:35:25 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: CS Dept, U. of N. Carolina, Chapel Hill
Lines: 21

I'm posting the following for someone in our department:

     There are those who claim that since unification is
     "inherently sequential" that "PROLOG would not be a
     good candidate for a parallel programming language."
     (Quote from D. Mizell's article in ZeroOne Supernet.)
     Similar statements have been made on various mailing
     lists and newsgroups.

     If arithmetic operations were inherently sequential,
     would anyone claim that any language using arithmetic
     would not be good for parallel programming? I don't
     recall anyone stating that a particular parallel
     machine was good because it added n-bit integers in
     time O(log n).

Comments?
_____________________________________________________
Bruce T. Smith              Dept. of Computer Science
USENET: decvax!mcnc!unc!bts New West Hall (035-A)
Others: bts.unc@CSNET-RELAY Chapel Hill, NC 27514