Speculative Computation in Multilisp

We demonstrate by experiments that performing computations in parallel before their results are known to be required can yield performance improvements over conventional approaches to parallel computing. We call such eager computation of expressions speculative computation, as opposed to conventional mandatory computation that is used in almost all contemporary parallel programming languages and systems. The two major requirements for speculative computation are: 1) a means to control computation to favor the most promising computations and 2) a means to abort computation and reclaim computation resources.

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