This session was devoted to discussion of

primitives for synchronizing the execution of concurrent

processes. Jack Dennis introduced the

session by noting that concurrent activity in a

computer systems leads to the possibility of nondeterminacy.

While most users with applications

programs do not want nondeterminate results~ some

applications are inherently nondeterminate in part,

e.g.~ an airline seat reservation system. At a

lower level, the prograrmners of the operating

system itself need to write both determinate and

nondeterminate programs. The challenge is in providing

primitives at each level in a system which

guarantee determinacy when that is required~ yet

allow the construction of nondeterminate programs

when that is required. As a basis for discussionj

Dennis invited Rick Holt to make a short presentation

on the levels in a computer system and

their relationship to synchronizing primitives.

In  ACM SIGPLAN Notices -- Proceeding of ACM SIGPLAN - SIGOPS interface meeting on Programming languages - operating systems

Publisher  Association for Computing Machinery, Inc.
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