Citation
Stephen A. Edwards. "SHIM: A Scheduling-Independent Concurrent Language for Embedded Systems". Talk or presentation, 8, November, 2006.

Abstract
Concurrent programming languages should be a good fit for embedded systems because they match the intrinsic parallelism of their architectures and environments. Unfortunately, typical concurrent programming formalisms are prone to races and nondeterminism, despite the presence of mechanisms such as monitors. We propose an alternative for describing such systems. Our SHIM (software/hardware integration medium) language, which uses Kahn networks with rendezvous communication at its heart, provides scheduling-independent concurrency in an asynchronous setting. It is a C-like imperative language extended with concurrency, inter-process communication, and exceptions. Compared to the SHIM we presented a year ago, this version of the language includes function calls, exceptions, and a novel way of treating function arguments as communication channels. We illustrate our programming model with examples including buffers and recursive pipelines. By construction, they are race-free. By providing a powerful, deterministic formalism for expressing systems, designing systems and verifying their correctness will become easier.

Electronic downloads

• http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~sedwards/presentations/2006-berkeley-shim.pdf

• HTML

  Stephen A. Edwards. <a
  href="http://chess.eecs.berkeley.edu/pubs/266.html"
  ><i>SHIM: A Scheduling-Independent Concurrent
  Language for Embedded Systems</i></a>, Talk or
  presentation,  8, November, 2006.

• Plain text

  Stephen A. Edwards. "SHIM: A Scheduling-Independent
  Concurrent Language for Embedded Systems". Talk or
  presentation,  8, November, 2006.

• BibTeX

  @presentation{Edwards06_SHIMSchedulingIndependentConcurrentLanguageForEmbedded,
      author = {Stephen A. Edwards},
      title = {SHIM: A Scheduling-Independent Concurrent Language
                for Embedded Systems},
      day = {8},
      month = {November},
      year = {2006},
      abstract = {Concurrent programming languages should be a good
                fit for embedded systems because they match the
                intrinsic parallelism of their architectures and
                environments. Unfortunately, typical concurrent
                programming formalisms are prone to races and
                nondeterminism, despite the presence of mechanisms
                such as monitors. We propose an alternative for
                describing such systems. Our SHIM
                (software/hardware integration medium) language,
                which uses Kahn networks with rendezvous
                communication at its heart, provides
                scheduling-independent concurrency in an
                asynchronous setting. It is a C-like imperative
                language extended with concurrency, inter-process
                communication, and exceptions. Compared to the
                SHIM we presented a year ago, this version of the
                language includes function calls, exceptions, and
                a novel way of treating function arguments as
                communication channels. We illustrate our
                programming model with examples including buffers
                and recursive pipelines. By construction, they are
                race-free. By providing a powerful, deterministic
                formalism for expressing systems, designing
                systems and verifying their correctness will
                become easier. },
      URL = {http://chess.eecs.berkeley.edu/pubs/266.html}
  }
  

Posted by Christopher Brooks on 29 May 2007.
For additional information, see the Publications FAQ or contact webmaster at chess eecs berkeley edu.