Dr. Seyfarth presented information the implementation of Glenda, which library of functions providing a message-passing interface for MIMD machines, used for parallel programming. The system was implemented at USM as a master's thesis project on an IPSC/860. The Glenda Model order collection of data is Tuple Space. The operations were derived from PVM operations. The tuples in the form of ("dataname",node,i,row ) are placed in a global tuple space and may be processed on different computers. The tuples are not tied to a specific process. Dr. Seyfarth then presented information about the function calls and examples of their use. Examples of some function calls are:

Gl_spawn(name,count);

Gl_exit()

Gl_out(tuple_name, ...) output function

Gl_in(tuple_name, ...) retrieve function (extracts info from tuple space)

Gl_rd(tuple_name,...) retrieve function (makes a copy from tuple space)

He then presented information about the Glenda preprocessor. This preprocessor converts Glenda calls to C function calls. It reads a hash file to learn how to hash distributing the tuple space, converts tuple names to integers, converts each tuple component to several function parameters to convey the type and intent. After giving examples of Glenda code, Dr. Seyfarth stated that on advantage to Glenda is that the Glenda code is smaller than native calls, which require more specifications.

Dr. Seyfarth then presented information about the IPSC/860 architecture, and described the server optimization.

Glenda appears to be an interesting, user friendly system. It will be interesting to see if in the future, it is ported to a modern architecture.