Actors and Continuous Functionals.
Abstract
This paper presents precise versions of some 'laws' that must be satisfied by computations involving communicating parallel processes. The laws take the form of stating plausible restrictions on the histories of computations that are physically realizable. The laws are very general in that they are obeyed by parallel processes executing on a time varying number of distributed physical processors. For example, some of the processors might be in orbiting satellites. The laws are justified by appeal to physical intuition and are to be regarded as falsifiable assertions about the kinds of computations that occur in nature rather than as proved theorems in mathematics. The laws are intended to be used to analyze the mechanisms by which multiple processes can communicate to work effectively together to solve difficult problems. The laws presented in this paper are intended to be applied to the design and analysis of systems consisting of large numbers of physical processors. The development of such systems is becoming economical because of rapid progress in the development of large scale integrated circuits. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jul 01, 1977
- Accession Number
- ADA062532
Entities
People
- Carl Hewitt
- Henry Baker
Organizations
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology