We present an extensive, annotated bibliography of the abstract machines designed for each of the main programming paradigms (imperative, object oriented, functional, logic and concurrent). We conclude that whilst a large number of efficient abstract machines have been designed for particular language implementations, relatively little work has been done to design abstract machines in a systematic fashion.

An accident of implementation may be responsible for the fact that Logic Programming, Deductive Databases and Non-Monotonic Reasoning are different subfields. Logic Programming views logic as a programming language --- usually through Prolog or an extension of Prolog. The Deductive Database community regards logic as a database language, often using a variant of magic sets as a basis for implementation. Finally the field of Non-Monotonic Reasoning studies non-classical logics of interest to Artificial Intelligence or other applications. However, there are currently few engines powerful enough to execute practical programs in Non-Monotonic Reasoning. Tabling methods have been formulated recently that have the potential to unify these subfields. This thesis explores how to efficiently implement one such meth...

This paper presents two somewhat independent results and sketches a mechanism that could tie these results together to form an automated theorem proving method. The first point is a correct and complete inference method for first-order logic based on the transformation between conjunctive and disjunctive canonical normal forms. This method, although apparently very ine#cient, presents interesting properties, such as not presenting external inference rules. The second point is a concurrent algorithm for dual transformation. This algorithm is presented in a general framework that can be specialized to model several formal systems. Finally, based on the representation adopted to define the algorithm, a dual transformation theorem proving method is sketched. 1 Keywords: first-order logic, dual transformation, inference, knowledge representation 1 Introduction The introduction by Robinson [28] of the Resolution method and by Smullyan [30] of the Semantic Tableaux method for automated theo...

This paper presents a hierarchical heterogeneous multi-agent society based on a hypercube parallel architecture able to manage, in a distributed way, a first-order logic knowledge base and to draw inferences from it. The knowledge base is structured into theories, composed by sets of formulas. The adopted internal representation of these theories consists of both canonical forms of the formulas that define them. The inference method underlying the deductive capabilities of the architecture is based on the fact that the two canonical forms of a set of formulas can used as a generalized inference rule, giving rise to a complete logical inference method. A prototype of the proposed knowledge representation system, where concurrence is sequentially simulated, has been implemented in Common Lisp/CLOS. Content Areas: Agent-Oriented Programming, Automated Reasoning, Knowledge Representation, Theorem Proving. 1 Introduction Any knowledge representation system based in first-order logic has to...

To allow efficient parallel processing of Prolog programs on distributed multiprocessors, a non-shared variable binding approach is required such that binding environments can be independently distributed among processors. This paper presents a binding scheme, which realises the independence of a clause's binding environment by eagerly instantiating variables across clause arguments. The application of the scheme on a Prolog virtual machine has illustrated its features of efficiency in execution and simplicity in implementation. The preliminary performance evaluation has demonstrated the feasibility of the scheme. 1

This article describes the abstract model implicit in logic programming and compares it to the models used in conventional languages. A simple example in Prolog illustrates how programming in logic can provide a concise problem description while offering a very flexible framework to solve for unknowns. The last section of this article surveys the current fields of active research in the area of logic programming and concludes with a prognosis for the future of this method