ParCeL-1: a parallel language based on autonomous agents for connectionist and AI applications

Abstract

We present a new language called ParCeL-1, dedicated to connectionist and explicitly parallel AI programming. ParCeL-1 is a language based on agents, similar to actor languages. Its agents are autonomous and follow a computational model in which the communications are non-blocking and the communication scheme is explicit. ParCeL-1 has a parallel implementation and runs on several multiprocessor architectures. We give an example of connectionist programming (the Kohonen map) and show several performance results on a transputer based multiprocessor architecture and on the Cray T3D parallel computer.