Merge pull request #1281 from Araq/new_spawn

New spawn

doc/manual.txt

@@ -2823,7 +2823,7 @@ The following builtin procs cannot be overloaded for reasons of implementation
 simplicity (they require specialized semantic checking)::
 
   defined, definedInScope, compiles, low, high, sizeOf, 
-  is, of, echo, shallowCopy, getAst
+  is, of, echo, shallowCopy, getAst, spawn
 
 Thus they act more like keywords than like ordinary identifiers; unlike a 
 keyword however, a redefinition may `shadow`:idx: the definition in 

doc/spawn.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,98 @@
+==========================================================
+                  Parallel & Spawn
+==========================================================
+
+Nimrod has two flavors of parallelism: 
+1) `Structured`:idx parallelism via the ``parallel`` statement.
+2) `Unstructured`:idx: parallelism via the standalone ``spawn`` statement.
+
+Both need the `threadpool <threadpool.html>`_ module to work.
+
+Somewhat confusingly, ``spawn`` is also used in the ``parallel`` statement
+with slightly different semantics. ``spawn`` always takes a call expression of
+the form ``f(a, ...)``. Let ``T`` be ``f``'s return type. If ``T`` is ``void``
+then ``spawn``'s return type is also ``void``. Within a ``parallel`` section
+``spawn``'s return type is ``T``, otherwise it is ``FlowVar[T]``.
+
+The compiler can ensure the location in ``location = spawn f(...)`` is not
+read prematurely within a ``parallel`` section and so there is no need for
+the overhead of an indirection via ``FlowVar[T]`` to ensure correctness.
+
+
+Parallel statement
+==================
+
+Example:
+
+.. code-block:: nimrod
+  # Compute PI in an inefficient way
+  import strutils, math, threadpool
+
+  proc term(k: float): float = 4 * math.pow(-1, k) / (2*k + 1)
+
+  proc pi(n: int): float =
+    var ch = newSeq[float](n+1)
+    parallel:
+      for k in 0..ch.high:
+        ch[k] = spawn term(float(k))
+    for k in 0..ch.high:
+      result += ch[k]
+
+  echo formatFloat(pi(5000))
+
+
+The parallel statement is the preferred mechanism to introduce parallelism
+in a Nimrod program. A subset of the Nimrod language is valid within a
+``parallel`` section. This subset is checked to be free of data races at
+compile time. A sophisticated `disjoint checker`:idx: ensures that no data
+races are possible even though shared memory is extensively supported!
+
+The subset is in fact the full language with the following
+restrictions / changes:
+
+* ``spawn`` within a ``parallel`` section has special semantics.
+* Every location of the form ``a[i]`` and ``a[i..j]`` and ``dest`` where
+  ``dest`` is part of the pattern ``dest = spawn f(...)`` has to be
+  provable disjoint. This is called the *disjoint check*.
+* Every other complex location ``loc`` that is used in a spawned
+  proc (``spawn f(loc)``) has to be immutable for the duration of
+  the ``parallel`` section. This is called the *immutability check*. Currently
+  it is not specified what exactly "complex location" means. We need to make
+  this an optimization!
+* Every array access has to be provable within bounds. This is called 
+  the *bounds check*.
+* Slices are optimized so that no copy is performed. This optimization is not
+  yet performed for ordinary slices outside of a ``parallel`` section. Slices
+  are also special in that they currently do not support negative indexes!
+
+
+
+
+Spawn statement
+===============
+
+A standalone ``spawn`` statement is a simple construct. It executes
+the passed expression on the thread pool and returns a `data flow variable`:idx:
+``FlowVar[T]`` that can be read from. The reading with the ``^`` operator is
+**blocking**. However, one can use ``awaitAny`` to wait on multiple flow
+variables at the same time:
+
+.. code-block:: nimrod
+  import threadpool, ...
+  
+  # wait until 2 out of 3 servers received the update:
+  proc main =
+    var responses = newSeq[RawFlowVar](3)
+    for i in 0..2:
+      responses[i] = spawn tellServer(Update, "key", "value")
+    var index = awaitAny(responses)
+    assert index >= 0
+    responses.del(index)
+    discard awaitAny(responses)
+
+Like the ``parallel`` statement data flow variables ensure that no data races
+are possible. Due to technical limitations not every type ``T`` is possible in
+a data flow variable: ``T`` has to be of the type ``ref``, ``string``, ``seq``
+or of a type that doesn't contain a type that is garbage collected. This
+restriction will be removed in the future.
+