Question

I wrote a simple parallel matrix multiplication using par and pseq.

After running this program, none of the sparks converted (SPARKS: 20 (0 converted, 0 pruned)).

I would like to hear your comment about improving this program.

Also about approaches for learning parallel programming in Haskell.

import Data.List
import Control.Parallel

parHelp :: ( Num a ) => [ a ] -> [ a ] -> a 
parHelp [] [] = 0
parHelp ( x : xs ) ( y : ys ) = ret where 
ret = par a ( pseq b ( a + b ) ) where 
        a = x * y 
        b = parHelp xs ys

helpMult :: ( Num a ) => [ a ] -> [ [ a ] ] -> [ a ]
helpMult _ [] = [] 
helpMult x ( y : ys ) = ret where 
 ret =  par a ( pseq b  ( a : b ) ) where 
   a = sum . zipWith ( *) x $ y  
   b = helpMult x ys

mult :: ( Num a ) => [ [ a ] ] -> [ [ a ] ] -> [ [ a ] ]
mult [] _ = []  
mult ( x : xs ) ys = ret where 
 ret = par a ( pseq b  ( a : b ) ) where 
    a = helpMult x ys 
    b = mult xs ys

main = print $ mult [[1 .. 4 ] , [ 1 .. 4 ] , [ 1 .. 4 ] , [ 1 .. 4] ] ( transpose [[1 .. 4 ] , [ 1 .. 4 ] , [ 1 .. 4 ] , [ 1 .. 4] ])

Answer 1

Did you try very large (at least 1000×1000) matrices? It is possible that the computation is too short to paralellize.