Since version 14.0, Dyalog APL has included the workspace isolate.dws, which enables simple asynchronous and parallel programming in Dyalog APL. From version 17.0, the source for the isolate workspace and associated samples have been moved to GitHub.
Documentation for the futures and isolates can be found in the Dyalog Documentation Centre.
A project was started at Dyalog with the goal of enhancing the isolate workspace so that it would be possible to run isolate servers in the cloud. In the end, it turned out that a couple of bugfixes in the code which validated peer IP addresses to deal with IPv6 addresses was all that was really required.
We also added a "sample" called AWS, which provides an interface to the Amazon Webservices Command Line Interface. This can be used to launch and manage AWS instances. Dyalog Webinar 10 demonstrates how to use this to run a large number of parallel isolates on the cloud.
In addition to the workspace which can be found in the ws folder along with most other distributed workspaces, a new folder of isolate-related samples are now installed in the folder Samples/isolate below the main Dyalog folder.
It contains the AWS class and an example of how to use it, and also includes the IIPageStats sample, which computes letter frequencies used on all major newspaper sites in a given state in the USA, as an example of how to use the ll.EachX (extended parallel each) tool:
| File | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| AWS.dyalog | Class | Interface to the Amazon Webservices Command Line Interface |
| AWSIsolates.dyalog | Function | Shows how to use the AWS class to start a set of virtual machines and use them to run Isolates |
| IIPageStats.dyalog | Namespace | Demonstrates the use of ll.EachX tool |