Guardians for Concurrent Systems
Name
AI_WP_212.pdf
Description
Main article
Size
2.1 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
31bd4609260691dc7327bf09eb63b253
Author(s)
Hewitt, Carl
Attardi, Giuseppe
Date Issued
December 1980
Publisher
MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Series/Report no.
MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Working Papers, WP-212
Abstract
In this paper we survey the current state of the art on fundamental aspects of concurrent systems. We discuss the notion of concurrency and discuss a model of computation which unifies the lambda calculus model and the sequential stored program model. We develop the notion of a guardian as a module that regulates the use of shared resources by scheduling their access, providing protection, and implementing recovery from hardware failures. A shared checking account is an example of the kind of resource that needs a guardian. We introduce the notions of a customer and a transaction manager for a request and illustrate how to use them to implement arbitrary scheduling policies for a guardian. A proof methodology is presented for proving properties of guardians, such as a guarantee of service for all requests received.
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