> I know what Axiom is, I know what MapReduce is, but what is Magnus? This > is a name I've not heard before.
Magnus is a package for Infinite Group Theory calculations invented by Gilbert Baumslag. Infinite Group Theory has the annoying property that nearly every question you ask cannot be decided. Thus one writes procedures which may or may not terminate (as opposed to algorithms). Magnus runs parallel tasks with different procedures, accepts the first one to terminate, and poisons the other computations. See http://sourceforge.net/projects/magnus Parallel algorithms could be run on multi-core or clusters. These infinite group objects can be written down with typically small, finite "presentations". For example, < a , b , c ; a^2 = cb > One question of interest is how to extend Axiom to use Magnus or Magnus to use Axiom. If Axiom created the above presentation and asked the master a question about it (e.g. is the group abelian?) you could pass the request off to many Magnus machines and grind on the answer. A similar technique might be employed with Sage to ask specific questions of specialized worker systems. Tim _______________________________________________ Axiom-developer mailing list Axiom-developer@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/axiom-developer
