Department of Computer Science and Technology

Technical reports

A new scheme for writing functional operating systems

William Stoye

September 1984, 30 pages

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.48456/tr-56

Abstract

A scheme is described for writing nondeterministic programs in a functional language. The scheme is based on message passing between a number of expressions being evaluated in parallel. I suggest that it represents a significant improvement over previous methods employing a nondeterministic merge primitive, and overcomes numerous drawbacks in that approach. The scheme has been designed in a practical context, and is being used to write an operating system for SKIM, a functionally programmed machine. It is not yet well understood in a mathematical sense.

Full text

PDF (2.5 MB)

BibTeX record

@TechReport{UCAM-CL-TR-56,
  author =	 {Stoye, William},
  title = 	 {{A new scheme for writing functional operating systems}},
  year = 	 1984,
  month = 	 sep,
  url = 	 {https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-56.pdf},
  institution =  {University of Cambridge, Computer Laboratory},
  doi = 	 {10.48456/tr-56},
  number = 	 {UCAM-CL-TR-56}
}