Computational interpretations of linear logic

Abstract

We study Girard's linear logic from the point of view of giving a concrete computational interpretation of the logic, based on the Curry-Howard isomorphism. In the case of Intuitionistic linear logic, this leads to a refinement of the lambda calculus, giving finer control over order of evaluation and storage allocation, while maintaining the logical content of programs as proofs, and computation as cut-elimination. In the classical case, it leads to a concurrent process paradigm with an operational semantics in the style of Berry and Boudol's chemical abstract machine. This opens up a promising new approach to the parallel implementation of functional programming languages; and offers the prospect of typed concurrent programming in which correctness is guaranteed by the typing. © 1993.