Distributed Programming with Objects and Threads in the Clouds System.
Partha Dasgupta, R. Ananthanarayanan, Sathis Menon, Ajay Mohindra, Raymond C. Chen · 1991
ABSTRACT The CLOUDS operating system supports a distributed environment consisting of compute servers, data servers and user workstations. The resulting environment logically simulates an integrated, centralized computing system. In addition, CLOUDS supports a programming paradigm that makes distributed programming simpler. Distributed programs can be written in a centralized fashion and yet they can exploit parallelism and distribution at runtime. The system paradigm is based on an object/thread model. The basic building blocks for applications are persistent memory (called objects) and computation (called threads). Unlike most systems, CLOUDS separates the notion of memory from computation. Programming environments based on these abstractions, though unconventional, provide powerful tools for composing applications that exploit concurrency and distribution.