= Welcome to the Parabix Technology Home Page =

Parabix technology is a high-performance programming framework for streaming 
text processing applications, leveraging both SIMD and multicore 
parallel processing features.  

== Parallel Bit Streams ==

The Parabix framework is based on the concept of parallel bit streams,
a fundamentally new transform representation of text.   Byte-oriented character stream data
is first transformed into eight parallel bit streams, each bit stream comprising
one bit per character code unit.  Code units may be ASCII characters or
UTF-8 bytes, for example, with one parallel bit stream defined for each of
bit 0 through bit 7 of each code unit.  Given such a representation, the 
128-bit SIMD (single-instruction multiple-data) registers of the SSE (Intel
architecture SIMD technology) or Altivec (Power PC architecture) may be used
to process 128 code unit positions at a time.

== The Pablo Language and Compilers ==

The [wiki:PabloLanguage Pablo Language] allows parallel bit stream programs to be conveniently
written using primitives that manipulate arbitrary-length bitstreams.


== PabloB ==

The PabloB language is an intermediate representation that represents the result
of translating programs on arbitrary-length bitstreams into block-at-a-time
processing.   It is currently a work in process.  The 
[source:proto/pabloj/trunk/input/grammar/scatter/pabloB.scatter PabloB grammar] is
defined using Scatter.  Here is an [source:proto/pabloj/trunk/input/test/pabloB/all/all.pablob example] of the concrete syntax.

== IDISA Run-Time Libraries ==

The [wiki:IDISAproject IDISA] project defines an abstraction for
portable SIMD programming featuring support for operations at all
power-of-2 field widths as well as transitions between those field-widths
(inductive doubling architecture).


== ICXML: Incorporating Parabix Technology into the Xerces-C XML Parser ==

ICXML (TM) is a highly-accelerated version of the widely-reknowned Xerces-C XML Parser.
Developed by International Characters, Inc., in partnership with our SFU
research lab, ICXML systematically incorporates Parabix and other acceleration
technologies into Xerces.  Speedups of 1.5X and more have been measured
with various applications on single core, while our experimental dual core
applications have seen acceleration of more than 2X over Xerces.

We are pleased that International Characters, Inc. is releasing ICXML as 
open source software hosted here under the Open Software License 3.0.

== Licensing ==

Parabix software as provided here as open source software under Open Software
License 3.0.  Patents pending. Commercial licensing is available through International
Characters, Inc., an SFU spin-off company based on Prof. Cameron's research.
Parabix is a trademark of International Characters.

[http://www.international-characters.com/ http://www.international-characters.com/]