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Term matching on parallel computers

  • Parallel And Distributed Computing
  • Conference paper
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Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP 1987)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 267))

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Abstract

Term matching is an important problem that arises very often in term rewriting and in functional and equational programming. In this paper, we present a new parallel algorithm for the term-matching problem on the EREW (Exclusive Read Exclusive Write) model of parallel computation. Our algorithm assumes a string representation of the two terms as its input. The string representation is first transformed into two labeled ordered trees and term matching is then performed on these two trees. If n is the length of the input terms then for any constant ∈, (0<#x2208;≤1) our algorithm uses O(n 1−∈) processors and takes O(n εlog n) time. If ε=0 the same algorithm will run in O(log 2 n) time. The only other known parallel algorithm for this problem is due to Dwork, Kanellakis and Stockmeyer that requires O(n 2) processors and takes either O(log n) or O(log 2 n) time. However, their algorithm uses the stronger CREW (Concurrent Read Exclusive Write) model of parallel computation and assumes a DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph) representation of the two terms as its input. The techniques used in our algorithm are novel and have wide applicability.

Research supported in part by NSF under grant number ECS-84-04399 and in part by ONR under contract N00014-84-K-0530

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 11794, Stony Brook, NY

    R. Ramesh, R. M. Verma, T. Krishnaprasad & I. V. Ramakrishnan

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  1. R. Ramesh
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  2. R. M. Verma
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  3. T. Krishnaprasad
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  4. I. V. Ramakrishnan
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Thomas Ottmann

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© 1987 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Ramesh, R., Verma, R.M., Krishnaprasad, T., Ramakrishnan, I.V. (1987). Term matching on parallel computers. In: Ottmann, T. (eds) Automata, Languages and Programming. ICALP 1987. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 267. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-18088-5_28

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-18088-5_28

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-18088-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-47747-1

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