sisal

sisal

Plant (Agave sisalana) of the agave family, and the fibre from its leaves. The fibre is made into ropes and twines for marine, agricultural, shipping, and general industrial use, as well as into matting, rugs, hats, and brushes. Though sometimes referred to as sisal hemp, it is not related to true hemp. Growing to a height of about 3 ft (1 m) and a diameter of about 15 in. (38 cm), the stalk bears fleshy, rigid, gray to dark green, lance-shaped leaves in a dense rosette. Tanzania and Brazil are the main producers of sisal.

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sisal

1. a Mexican agave plant, Agave sisalana, cultivated for its large fleshy leaves, which yield a stiff fibre used for making rope

2. the fibre of this plant

3. any of the fibres of certain similar or related plants

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sisal [′sī·səl]

(botany)

Agave sisalina.An agave of the family Amaryllidaceae indigenous to Mexico and Central America; a coarse, stiff yellow fiber produced from the leaves is used for making twine and brush bristles.

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(language)

SISAL - (Streams and Iteration in a Single Assignment Language) A general-purpose single assignment functional programming language with strict semantics, automatic parallelisation and efficient arrays. Outputs a dataflow graph in IF1 (Intermediary Form 1). Derived from VAL, adds recursion and finite streams. Pascal-like syntax. Designed to be a common high-level language for numerical programs on a variety of multiprocessors. Implementations exist for Cray X-MP, Cray Y-MP, Cray-2, Sequent, Encore Alliant, dataflow architectures, transputers and systolic arrays. Defined in 1983 by James McGraw et al, Manchester University, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Colorado State University and DEC. Revised in 1985. First compiled implementation in 1986. Performance superior to C and competitive with Fortran, combined with efficient and automatic parallelisation. Not to be confused with SASL. E-mail: John Feo <feo@llnl.gov>, Rod Oldehoeft <rro@cs.colostate.edu>. David C. Cann has written an Optimising SISAL Compiler (OSC) which attempts to make efficient use of parallel processors such as Crays. Latest version: 12.0, SISAL 1.2. ["A Report on the SISAL Language Project", J.T. Feo et al, J Parallel and Distrib Computing 10(4):349-366 (Dec 1990)].