Why and How in the ElipSys OR-parallel CLP System

ElipSys is a programming system supporting a constraint logic programming (CLP) language and OR-parallel execution. These two features complement each other: CLP programming eases the writing of efficient search programs while OR-parallelism allows one to attain quasi-linear or super-linear speed-ups when the programs are executed on parallel machines. The speed-ups come without significant additional programming effort. This paper gives the rationale behind this combination, explains how it influences the design of the language and the implementation, and gives results providing evidence for the synergy of these two paradigms.

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