Parallel operations and computing

In our multicore CPU and clustered computing world, it is imperative for a new language to have excellent parallel computing capabilities. This is one of the main strengths of Julia: providing an environment based on message-passing between multiple processes that can execute on the same machine or on remote machines.

In that sense, it implements the actor model (as Erlang, Elixir, and Pony do), but we'll see that the actual coding happens on a higher level than receiving and sending messages between processes, or workers (processors) as Julia calls them. The developer only needs to explicitly manage the main process from which all other workers are started. The message send and receive operations are simulated by higher-level operations that look like function calls.

Creating processes

To start with processes, add and make available the Distributed package with add Distributed, and using Distributed.

Julia can be started as a REPL or as a separate application...