From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Received: (from weis@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id PAA16337 for caml-red; Sun, 19 Nov 2000 15:37:01 +0100 (MET)
Received: from nez-perce.inria.fr (nez-perce.inria.fr [192.93.2.78]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id NAA14320 for <caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr>; Fri, 17 Nov 2000 13:44:58 +0100 (MET)
Received: from iona.dcs.gla.ac.uk (iona.dcs.gla.ac.uk [130.209.240.35])
	by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.10.0) with ESMTP id eAHCiq511289
	for <caml-list@inria.fr>; Fri, 17 Nov 2000 13:44:52 +0100 (MET)
Received: from crab.dcs.gla.ac.uk ([130.209.241.150])
	by iona.dcs.gla.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 3.13 #1)
	id 13wksu-0000xX-00; Fri, 17 Nov 2000 12:44:52 +0000
Received: by crab.dcs.gla.ac.uk (8.8.8+Sun/Dumb)
	id MAA15439; Fri, 17 Nov 2000 12:44:50 GMT
From: reig@dcs.gla.ac.uk
Message-Id: <200011171244.MAA15439@crab.dcs.gla.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Cluster Multiprocessing
To: caml-list@inria.fr
Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 12:44:49 +0000 (GMT)
Cc: dmcclain@azstarnet.com (David McClain)
In-Reply-To: <000501c0504d$796a3000$210148bf@dylan> from "David McClain" at Nov 16, 2000 09:18:42 PM
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL3]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: weis@pauillac.inria.fr

David McClain wrote:
> 
> I am about to embark on a project that seeks to reduce the computation time
> of a large problem from 100+ hours to less than 20 minutes. This is
> initially though to require a cluster of multiprocessors using either a
> Beowulf architecture, or a large, shared memory, message passing,
> architecture. I am interested in the suitability (or otherwise) of OCaml to
> such computations and the experiences of anyone else in this group on such
> architectures. Garbage collection across nodes in a shared memory
> architecture seems like a particularly daunting problem.
> 
> Any responses would be appreciated.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> - D.McClain, Sr. Scientist, Raytheon Systems Co., Tucson, AZ
> 
> 
> 

Hi,
 
This may not be exactly what you're after, but I'd thought I'd mention
it in case you want to look at it.
 
The compilation manager (CM) for SML/NJ has a parallel and distributed
make option. It seems to use coarse parallelism (multiprocessors, rsh
+ NFS)
 
The manual describes it in section 12
 
http://www.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~blume/SMLNJ-DEV/manual/index.html
 
Fermin Reig