Object-oriented concurrent programming in CST

ABSTRACT

CST is a programming language based on Smalltalk-80 that supports concurrency using locks, asynchronous messages, and distributed objects. Distributed objects have their state distributed across many nodes of a machine, but are referred to by a single name. Distributed objects are capable of processing many messages simultaneously and can be used to efficiently connect together large collections of objects. They can be used to construct a number of useful abstractions for concurrency. This paper describes the CST language, gives examples of its use, and discusses an initial implementation.

REFERENCES

• 1: Gul Agha, Actors: a model of concurrent computation in distributed systems, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1986
• 2: W. J. Dally, Finite-grain message passing concurrent computers, Proceedings of the third conference on Hypercube concurrent computers and applications: Architecture, software, computer systems, and general issues, p.2-12, January 19-20, 1988, Pasadena, California, United States [doi>10.1145/62297.62298]
• 3: W. J. Dally , L. Chao , A. Chien , S. Hassoun , W. Horwat , J. Kaplan , P. Song , B. Totty , S. Wills, Architecture of a message-driven processor, Proceedings of the 14th annual international symposium on Computer architecture, p.189-196, June 02-05, 1987, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States [doi>10.1145/30350.30372]
• 4: William J. Dally, A VLSI Architecture for Concurrent Data Structures, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Norwell, MA, 1987
• 5: Yasuhiko Yokote , Mario Tokoro, Concurrent programming in concurrent Smalltalk, Object-oriented concurrent programming, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1987
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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.2 Language Classifications

          Nouns: Smalltalk-80

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.1 PROGRAMMING TECHNIQUES
  D.4 OPERATING SYSTEMS

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design, Languages, Performance