Call for Papers

[osborne@merl.com (Randy Osborne)]

			Call for papers

	         Lisp and Symbolic Computation
	Special Issue on Parallel Symbolic Applications

Papers are solicited for a special issue of the International Journal
on Lisp and Symbolic Computation (LASC) on Parallel Symbolic
Applications.  Submissions should provide a thorough investigation and
presentation of a particular large "symbolic" application (or
application family) in some language and on some machine (or
machines).  In this call for papers, "symbolic" refers to a whole
spectrum of applications that emphasize the manipulation of symbolic
data rather than arithmetic computation on numeric data.  This
spectrum extends far beyond obviously "symbolic" applications such as
symbolic algebra systems to include any application involving dynamic
data structures and dynamic, data-dependent execution patterns,
typically with irregular structure.  Such applications may even
contain numeric computation components.  Examples of problems whose
solutions often include a "symbolic" component might be:

	* Search problems
	* Combinatorial optimization problems
	* VLSI layout, wire routing, and test generation
	* Simulation
	* Design verification and theorem proving
	* Program analysis and optimization
	* Manipulation of algebraic expressions
        * Case and rule based reasoning systems
        * Natural language processing
        * Parts assembly modeling, molecular modeling
        * Unstructured sparse graph and matrix problems

The primary goal of this special issue is to contribute a stock of
large applications that are well described, well understood, and
easily accessible to the parallel symbolic research community. It is
expected that these applications will be useful as benchmark programs
(for speed and qualitative comparisons) in language, run-time system,
and architecture research. A secondary goal of this special issue is
to present the current state-of-the-art in languages and run-time
systems for parallel symbolic computing.

Each submission should describe the principle(s) of the application(s).
Each paper should include a description of the application problem and
a description of the sequential and parallel algorithms used to solve
it. Authors should describe the application implementation, language
design, language implementation, run-time system, and architecture
issues and research as they see fit.  For each application there
should exist:
    1) sample "real world" input data and associated output data
    2) source code, in some common language such as Scheme, ML, Common
       Lisp, and C++, of at least one sequential implementation
    3) source code for parallel implementation(s)
    4) execution timings of sequential and parallel implementations
       with the data sets in (1). The timing for at least one sequential 
       implementation must correspond to the source code given in (2).
       The conditions under which these timings are obtained must be
       fully and clearly stated (e.g. language, language
       implementation/compiler, run-time system/operating system, machine
       description and machine parameters).

Papers must contain the execution timings (or a reasonable summary of
such timings) described in (4) and reasonable descriptions of the input
data in (1) and source codes in (2) and (especially) (3). To make the
applications widely available to the research community, the input and
output data for (1) and full source codes for (2) and (3) must be:
 * available for anonymous ftp or equivalent from the author, or
 * supplied to the manager of an anonymous ftp site to be designated, or
 * both of above.

These source codes should describe "stand alone" applications, so any
libraries used should be included (unless they are well known or
available publicly). Such repositories should also include any further
timing data as well as instructions on how to run the applications
and what to time.

Submissions are due 1 September 1993, with publication expected in the
first quarter of 1994.  Papers should be approximately 16 LASC
formatted pages in length -- about 7000 words. Accepted papers will
have to be submitted in LaTeX format using LASC's standard LaTeX style
file (available via anonymous ftp from cs.utah.edu in pub/kluwer.sty).
Authors should submit 5 copies of a full paper with abstract. 
Submissions should be sent to the special-issue editor:

Randy Osborne
Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs
201 Broadway
Cambridge, Massachusetts 
U.S.A. 02139
osborne@merl.com
FAX 617-621-7550