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Here are the development and implementation documents for the kernel VEOS functions. The Theses section contains additional research-oriented material; the Description section provides overview documentation of VEOS; and the Entities/body section provides documentation of the entity programming interface (FERN), the virtual body interface (Mercury), and the Imager. Each VEOS process is called a node, each node runs a VEOS kernel. Nodes map onto UNIX processors. The kernel consists of three tightly integrated components (SHELL, TALK, NANCY). |
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These kernel documents were all written by Geoff Coco. The Tool Builder's Manual documents the entire kernel system from a programmer's point of view.
SHELL manages node initialization, linkage, and the LISP interface. TALK manages internode communications using message-passing; nodes can reside on the same or different physical processors. Message packets use the same data structure as database entries. NANCY manages the distributed pattern-driven database. She is a Linda-like parallel database that treats communication and computation as independent tasks. The only data structure is the tuple; nested tuples (grouples) can have functional semantics, for example defining control structures using boundary logic. Tuples are accessed by associative pattern-matching, which includes regular expression pattern templates. |
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