High-Level Abstractions for Efficient Concurrent Systems

Physical Machine (APM). An APM consists of a collection of Abstract Physical Processors (APP). An APP is an abstraction of an actual computing engine. An abstract physical machine contains as many abstract physical processors as there are real processors in a multiprocessor environment. A Virtual Machine (VM) is an abstraction that is mapped onto a APM or a portion thereof. Virtual machines manage a single address space. They are also responsible for mapping global objects into local address spaces. In addition, each virtual machine contains the root of a graph of objects (i.e., root environment) that is used to trace the set of live objects in its associated address space. A virtual machine is closed over a set of Virtual Processors (VPs). Virtual processors execute on abstract physical processors. Abstract physical machines are responsible for managing virtual address spaces, and shared objects, handling hardware device interrupts and coordinating physical processors. Associated wit..