Structure Processing in a Data-Flow Computer,

A data-flow computer uses a packet communication system to achieve highly parallel execution of programs expressed in data-flow form. The machine is composed of two sections which perform instruction processing and structure processing and share a common auxiliary memory. The structure processing section of the processor maintains data structures represented as acyclic directed graphs and is viewed as a functional unit by the instruction processing section that is, instructions specifying structure operations are sent to the section, and the resulting values are returned to the instruction processing section. The organization of the structure processing section as a packet communication system permits the simultaneous processing of many structure operations, while avoiding the deadlock and synchronization problems often associated with systems that support concurrent memory transactions.