A functional execution model for a non-dataflow tagged token architecture

Abstract

The author proposes a new execution model for a non-dataflow tagged-token architecture which is not Petri-net based but rather more closely related to the lambda calculus. The model exploits a functional programming style having applicative-order evaluation. The computation's execution graph is dynamically generated according to easily understood dynamic tagging rules which have been demonstrated to be implementable. The model permits conceptually unbounded parallelism for an interesting class of list-oriented computations. The author explains the model with the help of a simple dot-product computation as an example. He highlights some of the major differences between the dataflow paradigm and his own. Architectural issues toward implementation are briefly discussed.<>