for Transputer Systems A Distributed Operating System
Hubertus Franke, Ben A. Abbott · 1990
The transputer is a small but complete processor to be used as a building block in high performance messagebased computer networks. The transputer hardware supports synchronized message passing and time sliced processes. Programming languages provide transparent access to the concurrency facilities of the chip. However, most transputer programming environments do not support higher level concurrency abstractions. As a result, flexibility is sacrificed since distributed application software is tied to a specific transputer network topology. This paper describes a programming environment that creates an abstraction level such that a network of trans puters is regarded as a virtual machine independent of the network topology. provides an extended processes model and a higher level of message passing than those provided by a bare transputer. The development of TOPS arose in the context of various projects requiring a higher level of flexibility. TOPS The ranmuter Svstem