Concurrent and distributed implementation of the asynchronous computing engine

Abstract

HOOPLA is a concurrent and asynchronous programming language. Computation is manifest as local transformations within a graph whose nodes are reactive components. The asynchronous computing engine (ACE) is a virtual machine which provides the required reactive execution environment for HOOPLA programs. The first part of the project describes a prototype implementation of ACE in which computation proceeds concurrently, as on a shared memory multiprocessor. Threads have been used to represent concurrent processing elements. The second part of the project extends this virtual machine to support computation across a local area. network. Some of the issues introduces by distribution include addressing, references across address spaces and reaction discovery. The report describes what extensions have been introduced and implemented in order to maintain the same reactive behaviour present in ACE, in its distributed extension dACE.