Design and Operation of a High Level Multicomputer Communications Package.

The need for a means of communication between tasks in either a multiprogramming or time-sharing environment becomes necessary when one wants to coordinate the activities of several real time interdependent tasks. Likewise, when a computing system is composed of several interconnected computers the same need for communication among them arises. In the Coordinated Science Laboratory at the University of Illinois, the computing system is composed of Digital Equipment Corporations PDP-10 and PDP-1140 computers connected together via a recently built high speed approx. one megabyte per second channel interface. Due to the Advanced Automation Laboratorys current interest in machine vision and industrial robotics which will require the execution of extensive interdependent control tasks on both computers, the necessity for a high level communication package which will allow any task on one computer to communicate with any task on the other computer is readily apparent.