CONSAT: A parallel constraint satisfaction system

In this paper we describe the parallelization of a medium-size symbolic fixed-point computation, CONSAT. CONSAT is a constraint satisfaction system that computes globally consistent solutions. The parallel version of CONSAT is implemented using abstractions from a parallel programming toolbox we developed. The toolbox is intended for novice parallel programmers, and programs based on abstractions from this toolbox may be executed on both uniprocessors and shared-memory multiprocessors without modifications. We explain how parallelism is introduced, and how concurrent accesses to shared data structures are handled. We will also describe the performance of CONSAT on sample inputs.