11 research outputs found
The application of message passing to concurrent programming
The development of concurrency in computer systems will be critically reviewed and an alternative strategy proposed. This is a programming language designed along semantic principles, and it is based upon the treatment of concurrent processes as values within that language's universe of discourse. An asynchronous polymorphic message system is provided to enable co-existent processes to communicate freely. This is presented as a fundamental language construct, and it is completely general purpose, as all values, however complex, can be passed as messages. Various operations are also built into the language so as to permit processes to discover and examine one another. These permit the development of robust systems, where localised failures can be detected, and action can be taken to recover. The orthogonality of the design is discussed and its implementation in terms of an incremental compiler and abstract machine interpreter is outlined in some detail. This thesis hopes to demonstrate that message-oriented communication in a highly parallel system of processes is not only a natural form of expression, but is eminently practical, so long as the entities performing the communication are values in the languag
Numerical Analysis of Spudcan Foundations.
Imperial Users onl
The design and implementation of a prototype exokernel operating system
Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1996.Includes bibliographical references (p. 99-106).by Dawson R. Engler.M.S
An error recovery scheme for concurrent processes
PhD ThesisWith the more widespread use of multi- processors and distributed computing systems, programmers need a simple, reliable interface to them. This thesis describes language constructs, and mechanisms for their support, that can be used in the implementation of fault-tolerant concurrent processes. The basic language structure is the Atomic Action, supported by a modified recovery cache mechanism. This combines the collection of recovery data with the locking of resources and allows recovery blocks to be integrated with Atomic Actions. Synchronisation between actions is discussed, as well as a means of detecting and breaking deadlocks, based on the use of a "blocking graph". Reliable communication and cooperation between actions is considered, and several constructs are investigated. The limitations of Shared Atomic Actions are identified, and, further, the use of a form of reliable "secretary" is shown to lead to unnecessary recovery activity. These problems are resolved by structures based on a classification of resources by the way they are used in programs. Also contained in the thesis are descriptions of trial implementations of some of the mechanisms described, and a discussion of existing concurrent programming techniques.Science Research Council of Great Britai
Distributed and decentralized control in fully distributed processing systems
Issued as Quarterly progress reports no. 1-5, and Final technical report, Project no. G-36-649Final technical report has title: Distributed and decentralized control in fully distributed processing system
Research on fully distributed data processing systems
Issued as Quarterly progress reports, nos. 1-11, and Project report, Project no. G-36-64