[Haskell-cafe] Multiprocessor compiling.

[Matthew Roberts]

It seems there is quite some interest in compiling code for
multi-processor machines.

As a research student, I am always looking for interesting projects to do.
However, I am no haskell guru and have certainly never written a compiler.
All the comments so far have been very interesting, but too many go over
my head and I am not gettting a coherent view of what is going on.

Let me try to tie this up.

The basic computational model of functional languages seems inherantly
parallilisable, but there are clearly many problems - and I don't really
understand them.

I just picked up the book on implementing the back end of a Haskell
compiler and so I will eventually get there.  For the meantime, and for
all the others out there in my situation, could someone who knows tell us
the fundamental reason it is hard to compile Haskell for multiple
processor machines - in broad strokes.

Cheers,

Matt