PS-NET - a predictable typed coordination language for stream processing in resource-constrained environments

Abstract

Stream processing is a well-suited application pattern for embedded computing. This holds true even more so when it comes to multi-core systems where concurrency plays an important role. With the latest trend towards more dynamic and heterogeneous systems there seems to be a shift from purely synchronous systems towards more asynchronous ones. The downside of this shift is an increase in programming complexity due to the more subtile concurrency issues. Several special purpose streaming languages have been proposed to help the programmer in coping with these concurrency issues. In this paper, we take a different approach. Rather than proposing a full-blown programming language, we propose a coordination language named PS-Net. Its purpose is to coordinate existing resource-bound building blocks by means of asynchronous streaming. Within this paper we introduce code annotations and synchronisation patterns that result in a flexible but still resource-boundable coordination language At the example of a raytracing application we demonstrate the applicability of PS-Net for expressing the coordination of rather dynamic computations in a resource-bound way.