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Compilation of a CSP-like language

Supervisor

Suitable for

MSc in Advanced Computer Science
Computer Science and Philosophy, Part C
Computer Science, Part B
Mathematics and Computer Science, Part C
Computer Science, Part C

Abstract

This is a compiler project, also requiring familiarity with concurrency.

The parallel programming language occam is essentially an implementable sublanguage of CSP. The aim of this project is to produce a small portable implementation of a subset of occam; the proposed technique is to implement a virtual machine based on the inmos transputer, and a compiler which targets that language.

One of the aims of the project is to implement an extension to occam which permits recursion; more ambitious projects might implement a distributed implementation with several communicating copies of the virtual machine. Other possibilities are to produce separate virtual machines, optimised for displaying a simulation, or for efficiency of implementation, or translating the virtual machine code into native code for a real machine.