multicore box ;-) It's my main show-stopper right now. Any clues on how to get access to one, eg via ssh? 32-core or higher would be favorite ;-) but I guess even just a 4-core or so is enough for proof-of-concept?
I think you'll have plenty of work to be before you get to the stage of needing a box with more than 4 cores. Even a dual core machine is likely to be enough for initial experimentation, I would say.
... or build a minimal vm, enough to get 3 or 4 somewhat interesting algorithms / programs to run, and get automatic threading working on a couple of targets, eg on maps, and whatever [ x | x <- somelist ] these things are called. (folds are a little harder from an implementation point of view, so can be a future upgrade).
The other thing to consider is that there are several other VMs out there, including many under open source licenses, that can be used as a testbed. Examples include the Java VM, Mono, Parrot, LLVM, etc.
Would you or Neil fancy being a mentor for this, if I can start to get somewhere on it?
Not me! I'm not an academic... I've never had a paper published and I'm not likely to either. Regards Neil