A Declarative Synchronization Mechanism for Parallel Object-Oriented Computation

Takanobu BABA  Norihito SAITOH  Takahiro FURUTA  Hiroshi TAGUCHI  Tsutomu YOSHINAGA 

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information and Systems  Vol.E78-D  No.8  pp.969-981
Publication Date: 1995/08/20
Online ISSN: 
Print ISSN: 0916-8532
Type of Manuscript: PAPER
Category: Computer Systems
Keyword: 
parallel processing,  distributed processing,  synchronization mechanism,  parallel object-oriented computation,  asynchronous operation, 

Full Text: PDF

Summary: 
We have designed and implemented a simple yet powerful declarative synchronization mechanism for a paralle object-oriented computation model. The mechanism allows the user to control multiple message reception, specify the order of message reception, lock an invocation, and specify relations as invocation constraints. It has been included in a parallel object-oriented language, called A-NETL. The compiler and operating system have been developed on a total architecture, A-NET (Actors NETwork). The experimental results show that (i) the mechanism allows the user to model asynchronous events naturally, without losing the integrity of described programs; (ii) the replacement of the mechanism with the user's code requires tedious descriptions, but gains little performance enhancement, and certainly loses program readability and integrity; (iii) the mechanism allows the user to shift synchronous programs to asynchronous ones, with a scalable reduction of execution times: an average 20.6% for 6 to 17 objects and 46.1% for 65 objects. These prove the effectiveness of the proposed synchronization mechanism.