An improvement to dynamic stream handling in dataflow computers

Abstract

This paper presents a new method of implementing dynamic streams of streams using token relabelling which reduces the complexity and drawbacks of the previously proposed method due to Gaudiot. Consider a sequence of tokens, Vi/sub [ui]/, which will appear in sequence on the stream-carrying arc. Two tokens Va/sub [ux]/ and Vb/sub [uy]/, will be considered belonging to the same stream if they have the same context: [ux]=[uy]. Elements within a stream are ordered according to the sequence in time that they appear on the arc. Let the highest level of streams has the context [uO], that of the surrounding block. Thus the highest level stream is the sequence of values Vi/sub [uO]/. Each element of this stream has as its value a unique context, namely, that of the stream that it represents. So the token Vi/sub [uO]/ identifies as a stream the sequence of tokens whose context is [Vi].<>