A definition of and linguistic support for partial quiescence

The global quiescence (GQ) of a distributed computation (or distributed termination detection) is an important problem. Some concurrent programming languages and systems provide GQ detection as a built‐in feature so that programmers do not need to write special synchronization code to detect quiesce...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inConcurrency and computation Vol. 20; no. 8; pp. 969 - 995
Main Authors Man, Billy Yan-Kit, Chan, Hiu Ning (Angela), Gallagher, Andrew J., Goundan, Appu S., Keen, Aaron W., Olsson, Ronald A.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Chichester, UK John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 10.06.2008
Subjects
concurrent programming language
partial quiescence
termination detection
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Summary:The global quiescence (GQ) of a distributed computation (or distributed termination detection) is an important problem. Some concurrent programming languages and systems provide GQ detection as a built‐in feature so that programmers do not need to write special synchronization code to detect quiescence. This paper introduces partial quiescence (PQ), which generalizes quiescence detection to a specified part of a distributed computation. PQ is useful, for example, when two independent concurrent computations that both rely on GQ need to be combined into a single program. The paper describes how we have designed and implemented a PQ mechanism within an experimental version of the JR concurrent programming language, and have gained experience with several representative applications. Our early results are promising qualitatively and quantitatively. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliography:National Science Foundation, equipment grant - No. EIA-0224469
ArticleID:CPE1248
ark:/67375/WNG-L68QC4XG-R
istex:BB54753155CDA30F0CF10F421089191C74D083E2
ISSN:1532-0626
1532-0634
DOI:10.1002/cpe.1248