Abstract
This paper shows that asynchronous message-passing actor languages can compete with classical synchronous, shared memory, PRAM languages. We prove the equivalence between these two computational models through their ability to express NC problems. This result corroborates the robustness of the NC class which encompasses problems exhibiting data-level parallelism.
This equivalence result enables to use interesting features of parallel and distributed execution models of PRAMs on realistic parallel architectures, in order to propose the bases of a randomized execution model for actor languages, which is asymptotically satisfactory. Morover, because the execution models of PRAMs and Actors share the same basic mechanisms, the actor execution model strengthens the opinion that the universal execution model for fine grain parallelism languages [Val89], [Val90] is as universal as the Von Neuman execution model in the sequential computation domain.
First author has partly been funded by EEC grants under Esprit Project P440
Second author worked within EEC Basic Research Project DEMON
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© 1991 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Baude, F., Vidal-Naquet, G. (1991). Actors as a parallel programming model. In: Choffrut, C., Jantzen, M. (eds) STACS 91. STACS 1991. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 480. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0020798
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0020798
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