Abstract

. This paper describes an algebraic framework for the study of dataflow networks, which form a paradigm for concurrent computation in which a collection of concurrently and asynchronously executing processes communicate by sending messages between ports connected via FIFO message channels. A syntactic dataflow calculus is defined, having two kinds of terms which represent networks and computations, respectively. By imposing suitable equivalences on networks and computations, we obtain the free dataflow algebra, in which the dataflow networks with m input ports and n output ports are regarded as the objects of a category S n m , and the computations of such networks are represented by the arrows. Functors defined on S n m label each computation by the input buffer consumed and the output buffer produced during that computation, so that each S n m is a span in Cat. It is shown that the free dataflow algebra construction underlies a monad in the category of collections S = fS n m : m...

Citations