An asymmetric stream communication system

摘要

Input and output are often viewed as complementary operations, and it is certainly true that the direction of data flow during input is the reverse of that during output. However, in a conventional operating system, the direction of control flow is the same for both input and output: the program plays the active role, while the operating system transput primitives are always passive. Thus there are four primitive transput operations, not two: the corresponding pairs are passive input and active output, and active input and passive output. This paper explores the implications of this idea in the context of an object oriented operating system.

This work is supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. MCS-8004111. Computing equipment and technical support are provided in part under a cooperative research agreement with Digital Equipment Corporation.