Communicating Sequential Processes + D = DCSP

kris foo at bar.com
Mon Jan 29 02:18:17 PST 2007


Bill Baxter wrote:
> Mikola Lysenko wrote:
> 
>> DCSP is a lightweight concurrency library that I wrote last summer. 
>> While most threading libraries seek to avoid concurrency or eliminate 
>> it entirely, DCSP takes a slightly different approach.  The idea grew 
>> from the work I did on StackThreads and is inspired by C.A.R. Hoare's 
>> Communicating Sequential Processes and Robin Milner's Pi-Calculus.  In 
>> DCSP, concurrency is the essential feature of program design.  This is 
>> not as absurd as it initially sounds, since many programs are innately 
>> concurrent.
>>
>> A DCSP program is composed of a network of communicating processes, 
>> each connected by synchronous point-to-point channels.  This idea is 
>> easy to visualize like a large digital circuit.
>>
>> The syntax is closer to Occam, and is far simpler than JCSP. 
>> Additionally, the performance of DCSP far surpasses JCSP, and unlike 
>> C++CSP, DCSP is actually multi-threaded.
>>
>> The current version supports two schedulers, one cooperative scheduler 
>> based on stack threads, and another threaded scheduler using Phobos' 
>> threads.  In the future, these may be supplemented with a hybrid 
>> scheduler using a work-stealing algorithm similar to MIT's CiLK 
>> project.  Additionally, the basic ideas in this project could be 
>> extended to network communication.
>>
>> Anyway, you can check out the library at: http://www.assertfalse.com
>>
>> JCSP: http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/projects/ofa/jcsp/
>> C++CSP: http://www.twistedsquare.com/cppcsp/
>> Occam: http://www.wotug.org/occam/
>> Communicating Sequential Processes: http://www.usingcsp.com/cspbook.pdf
>>
>> -Mik
> 
> 
> Excellent.  I spent some time programming Inmos Transputers using Occam 
> back in the day.

Sweet! Me too <g>

DCSP has been a long time coming, and it's nice to see such a succinct 
syntax (quite unlike the C++ and Java attempts). Great job, Mik!

> 
> But I have to say the project of yours that I think really deserves more 
> attention is *Professor Automaton's Cruel Legume Device*.
>      http://www.assertfalse.com/puyo/www/
> :-)
> Burned many hours on puyo puyo back in the day too. :-)  *DAI DAGEKI!*

Too cruel for me -- I was wasting time on the original Mac FlightSim <g>

> 
> --bb



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