An Overview of Concurrent Models of Computation for Real-Time
Systems
Edward A. Lee, UC Berkeley
Tutorial at the ARTES Summer School, Sweden, August 20, 2007
This tutorial describes a family of concurrent models of computation
with properties that are better suited to real-time systems than the
standard multithreaded techniques used in mainstream software
engineering. The approach is based on software components that are
"actor-oriented" (contrasted with "object-oriented"), where
components are conceptually concurrent and communicate through one
of several messaging schemas. This talk describes the principles of
actor-oriented design, including common features across models of
computation, such as abstract syntax and type systems, and features
that differ across models of computation, such concurrent threads of
control and messaging schemas. Mechanisms that support the use of
heterogeneous mixtures of models of computation are also described.
The particular focus will be on suitability of these models for
real-time systems, including distributed real-time systems. The
Ptolemy II system, which is the experimental framework used to
experiment with actor-oriented design, will be described and used to
illustrate key points. The Ptolemy Project at UC Berkeley is part of
Chess, the Berkeley Center for Hybrid and Embedded Software Systems.
Details can be found at http://ptolemy.org.
Biography:
Edward A. Lee is the Robert S. Pepper Distinguished Professor and
Chair of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS)
department at U.C. Berkeley. His research interests center on
design, modeling, and simulation of embedded, real-time
computational systems. He is a director of Chess, the Berkeley
Center for Hybrid and Embedded Software Systems, and is the director
of the Berkeley Ptolemy project. He is co-author of five books and
numerous papers. He has led the development of several influential
open-source software packages, including Ptolemy, Ptolemy II,
HyVisual, and VisualSense. His bachelors degree (B.S.) is from Yale
University (1979), his masters (S.M.) from MIT (1981), and his Ph.D.
from U. C. Berkeley (1986). From 1979 to 1982 he was a member of
technical staff at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Holmdel, New
Jersey, in the Advanced Data Communications Laboratory. He is a
co-founder of BDTI, Inc., where he is currently a Senior Technical
Advisor, and has consulted for a number of other companies. He is a
Fellow of the IEEE, was an NSF Presidential Young Investigator, and
won the 1997 Frederick Emmons Terman Award for Engineering
Education.
