Aquarius Prolog 1.0

Aquarius Prolog is a high-performance, portable Prolog implementation developed since 1989 by the Aquarius Project at the University of California, Berkeley, the Advanced Computer Architecture Laboratory at the University of Southern California, and at Digital Equipment Corporation's Paris Research Laboratory. Aquarius Prolog 1.0 was released in April 1993. The release includes:

A state-of-the-art Prolog compiler with global analysis. The compiler is built around an execution model for Prolog, the Berkeley Abstract Machine (BAM), that retains desirable features of the Warren Abstract Machine (WAM), but is much finer-grained. The BAM has a tagged load-store instruction set. This allows for significant further optimizations and is easier to map onto actual general-purpose machines.
A back-end that maps the BAM onto various actual general-purpose machines.
A run-time system offering substantially the same built-in predicates and memory management as Quintus Prolog, a leading commercial system, with additions such as two kinds of destructive assignment. Most of the built-in predicates are written in Prolog, with little or no performance penalty.
An interpreter for program development. The interpreter is written in Prolog, has a worst-case performance half that of C-Prolog, an efficient Prolog interpreter written in C, and often has better performance.
Documentation, including a User Manual (790K).
Source code and implementation notes (in the Full distribution). It is hoped these will stimulate and support experiments and extensions.

Foundation of Aquarius Prolog: Peter Van Roy's Ph.D. dissertation

Platforms

Aquarius Prolog is available in two distributions, Enduser and Full, on the following five platforms:

MIPS R3000, ULTRIX, that is, DECstations running ULTRIX.
MIPS R3000, RISC/os, that is, MIPS machines running RISC/os.
SPARC, SunOS, that is, Sun 4s running SunOS.
MC68020 (or higher), HP-UX, that is, Hewlett-Packard HP 9000 Series 300 and 400 machines with MC68020, MC68030 or MC68040 processors and running HP-UX.
MC68020 (or higher), SunOS, that is, Sun 3s running SunOS.

The Enduser distribution is intended for users who want to develop and run Prolog programs. It contains only the object code of the system. The Full distribution is intended for research and development in Prolog implementation. It includes full source code and is able to recompile itself. The Enduser distribution requires a maximum of 25 MB of free disk space (some distributions require less), the Full distribution requires a maximum of 85 MB of free disk space (some distributions require less).

How to Get Aquarius Prolog

Aquarius Prolog may be obtained free of charge from USC. To obtain a copy, send a message to listserv@acal-server.usc.edu (the ACAL listserver) with empty subject and following body:

	get aquarius-info license

You will receive the license agreement by email. After signing and mailing a physical copy to ACAL (the Advanced Computer Architecture Laboratory; see address below), you will be given access to the system. To get more information about the Full and Enduser distributions, send the listserver a message with empty subject whose body contains one or both of the two lines:

	get aquarius-info readme-full
	get aquarius-info readme-enduser

Some of the Full end Enduser distributions may be obtained by anonymous ftp to UCL. If you access these distributions, please send concurrently a license agreement to USC.

Mailing List

We have set up the mailing list aquarius-prolog to provide a forum by which the Aquarius user community can exchange information. To join the mailing list, send the listserver a message with empty subject and following body:

	subscribe aquarius-prolog

To get more information about the abilities of the listserver, send it a message with help in the body. The aquarius-prolog mailing list is not moderated in the strict sense, but it is monitored by ACAL and by individuals associated with the system's development.

Disclaimer

In its current state, the system has a full complement of built-ins (Quintus-compatible), is available free with full source code, but is no longer being maintained.

The Developers

Tom Getzinger, Ralph Clarke Haygood, Peter Van Roy

University of Southern California
Advanced Computer Architecture Laboratory
Attn:  Aquarius Prolog Licensing
3740 S. McClintock, Ste 131
Los Angeles, CA 90089-2561
e-mail (human):       aquarius@acal-server.usc.edu
e-mail (listserver):  listserv@acal-server.usc.edu

Please send comments and questions to vanroy@dfki.uni-sb.de.