SMP - A Symbolic Manipulation Program

Abstract

SMP is a new general-purpose symbolic manipulation computer program which has been developed during the past year by the authors, with help from G.C. Fox, J.M. Greif, E.D. Mjolsness, L.J. Romans, T. Shaw and A.E. Terrano. The primary motivation for the construction of the program was the necessity of performing very complicated algebraic manipulations in certain areas of theoretical physics. The need to deal with advanced mathematical constructs required the program to be of great generality. In addition, the size of the calculations anticipated demanded that the program should operate quickly and be capable of handling very large amounts of data. The resulting program is expected to be valuable in a wide variety of applications. In this paper, we describe some of the basic concepts and principles of SMP. The extensive capabilities of SMP are described, with examples, in the “SMP Handbook” (available on request from the authors).