On the application of Array Processors to symbol manipulation

In the past general purpose programs for symbol manipulation have been written for traditional Von Neumann machine architectures. The design and implementation of a simple prototype symbol manipulation system for the ICL Distributed Array Processor (DAP), is described. The system is restricted to monovariate polynomials with single precision integer coefficients. The algorithms and data structure are discussed and the design of a more general system for multivariate polynomials using arithmetic with semi-infinite precision is considered.