Adam: An Ada‐based language for multiprocessing

Abstract

AbstractAdam is a high‐level language for parallel processing. It is intended for programming resource scheduling applications, in particular supervisory packages for run‐time scheduling of multiprocessing systems. An important design goal was to provide support for implementation of Ada and its run‐time environment. Adam has been used to implement Ada task supervision and also as a high‐level target language for compilation of Ada tasking.Adam provides facilities corresponding to the Ada sequential constructs (including subprograms, packages, exceptions, generics). In addition, it provides specialized module constructs for implementation of packages that may be shared between parallel processes, and new predefined types for scheduling. The parallel processing constructs of Adam are more primitive than Ada tasking. Strong restrictions are enforced on the ways in which parallel processes can interact.A compiler for Adam has been implemented in MacLisp on DEC PDP‐10 computers. Runtime support packages in Adam for scheduling (on a single CPU) and I/O are also provided. The compiler contains a library manipulation facility for separate compilation.The Adam compiler has been used to build an Ada compiler for most of the July 1980 Ada, including task types and rendezvous constructs. This was achieved by implementing the translation of Ada tasking into Adam parallel processing as a preprocessor to the Adam compiler. This present Ada compiler, which has been operational since December 1980, uses a procedure call implementation of tasking. It can be easily modified to other implementations. Compilation of Ada tasking into a high‐level target language such as Adam facilitates studying questions of correctness and efficiency of various compilation algorithms, and code optimizations specific to tasking, e.g. elimination of unnecessary threads of control.This paper gives an overview of Adam and examples of its use. Emphasis is placed on the differences from Ada. Experience using Adam to build the experimental Ada system is evaluated. Design of a run‐time supervisor in Adam is discussed in detail.