Static parallelization of functional programs: Elimination of higher-order functions & optimized inlining

Abstract

Functional programs have long been recognized as attractive subjects of an implicit static parallelization because functional programming excludes artificial dependences, which would restrict parallelism. One central concept which makes functional programming a powerful paradigm is the higher-order function, which can have functions appearing in its arguments or result. We present an automatic method of eliminating higher-order functions, which is based on earlier work by Bell, Bellegarde and Hook [2]. The number of auxiliary functions added in the process is subsequently minimized by inlining transformations. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1999.