{"id":{"repo_id":"uiuc","oai_identifier":"oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/81881"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/uiuc/oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/81881","repository":{"repo_id":"uiuc","name":"University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign","base_url":"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh"},"display":{"title":"THAL: An Actor System for Efficient and Scalable Concurrent Computing","abstract":"This thesis studies how to support communication between actors efficiently. First, we discuss communication patterns commonly arising in many parallel applications in the context of an experimental actor-based language, THAL. The language provides as communication abstractions concurrent call/return communication, delegation, broadcast, and local synchronizaton constraints. The thesis shows how the abstractions are efficiently implemented on stock-hardware distributed memory multicomputers. Specifically, we describe an experimental runtime system and compiler. The THAL runtime system recognizes and exploits the cost difference between local and remote message scheduling; it transparently supports actor's location independence; and, it implements non-blocking remote actor creation to improve utilization of computation resources. The THAL compiler incorporates a number of analysis and transformation techniques which work hand in hand with the runtime system. Among the techniques are: global data flow analysis to infer type information--the compiler optimizes code for each message send according to the type of its receiver expression; concurrency restoration through dependence analysis and source-to-source transformation; concurrency control with dependence analysis which allows multiple threads to be active on an actor with thread safety, i.e., with no interference between the threads. Experiments on a stock-hardware distributed memory multicomputer (CM-5) show that the compiler and the run-time system yield efficiency and scalability on applications with sufficiently large granularity which are comparable to the performance of other less flexible systems.","abstract_html":"This thesis studies how to support communication between actors efficiently. First, we discuss communication patterns commonly arising in many parallel applications in the context of an experimental actor-based language, THAL. The language provides as communication abstractions concurrent call/return communication, delegation, broadcast, and local synchronizaton constraints. The thesis shows how the abstractions are efficiently implemented on stock-hardware distributed memory multicomputers. Specifically, we describe an experimental runtime system and compiler. The THAL runtime system recognizes and exploits the cost difference between local and remote message scheduling; it transparently supports actor's location independence; and, it implements non-blocking remote actor creation to improve utilization of computation resources. The THAL compiler incorporates a number of analysis and transformation techniques which work hand in hand with the runtime system. Among the techniques are: global data flow analysis to infer type information--the compiler optimizes code for each message send according to the type of its receiver expression; concurrency restoration through dependence analysis and source-to-source transformation; concurrency control with dependence analysis which allows multiple threads to be active on an actor with thread safety, i.e., with no interference between the threads. Experiments on a stock-hardware distributed memory multicomputer (CM-5) show that the compiler and the run-time system yield efficiency and scalability on applications with sufficiently large granularity which are comparable to the performance of other less flexible systems.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Kim, Wooyoung"],"institution":"University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign","degree_name":"Ph.D.","degree_level":"Dissertation","degree_discipline":"Computer Science","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Agha, Gul A."],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2015,"date_issued":"2015-09-25T20:20:51Z","date_published":"2015-09-25T20:20:51Z","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:26:17Z","subjects":["Computer Science"],"languages":["eng"],"rights":[],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["(MiAaPQ)AAI9737161"],"render_values":[{"text":"(MiAaPQ)AAI9737161","href":null,"code":true}]}]},"links":{"outbound_url":"http://hdl.handle.net/2142/81881","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Agha, Gul A."]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Kim, Wooyoung"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2015-09-25T20:20:51Z","10000-01-01","1997"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["text"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Computer Science"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Dissertation"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Ph.D."]},{"key":"thesis:institution_name","label":"Thesis Institution Name","values":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Computer Science"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["eng"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["http://hdl.handle.net/2142/81881","(MiAaPQ)AAI9737161"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["This thesis studies how to support communication between actors efficiently. First, we discuss communication patterns commonly arising in many parallel applications in the context of an experimental actor-based language, THAL. The language provides as communication abstractions concurrent call/return communication, delegation, broadcast, and local synchronizaton constraints. The thesis shows how the abstractions are efficiently implemented on stock-hardware distributed memory multicomputers. Specifically, we describe an experimental runtime system and compiler. The THAL runtime system recognizes and exploits the cost difference between local and remote message scheduling; it transparently supports actor's location independence; and, it implements non-blocking remote actor creation to improve utilization of computation resources. The THAL compiler incorporates a number of analysis and transformation techniques which work hand in hand with the runtime system. Among the techniques are: global data flow analysis to infer type information--the compiler optimizes code for each message send according to the type of its receiver expression; concurrency restoration through dependence analysis and source-to-source transformation; concurrency control with dependence analysis which allows multiple threads to be active on an actor with thread safety, i.e., with no interference between the threads. Experiments on a stock-hardware distributed memory multicomputer (CM-5) show that the compiler and the run-time system yield efficiency and scalability on applications with sufficiently large granularity which are comparable to the performance of other less flexible systems.","Made available in DSpace on 2015-09-25T20:20:51Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license.txt: 4848 bytes, checksum: 96035ab3f5e1c23cc7138a224ce498bd (MD5) 9737161.pdf: 3476516 bytes, checksum: 352aa705657e5c8d6be301e7aebdda30 (MD5) Previous issue date: 1997","Embargo set by: Seth Robbins for item 83162 Lift date: Forever Reason: Restricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETDs","Restricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETDs","U of I Only","117 p.","Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1997."]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["THAL: An Actor System for Efficient and Scalable Concurrent Computing"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor":["Agha, Gul A."],"dc:creator":["Kim, Wooyoung"],"dc:date":["2015-09-25T20:20:51Z","10000-01-01","1997"],"dc:description":["This thesis studies how to support communication between actors efficiently. First, we discuss communication patterns commonly arising in many parallel applications in the context of an experimental actor-based language, THAL. The language provides as communication abstractions concurrent call/return communication, delegation, broadcast, and local synchronizaton constraints. The thesis shows how the abstractions are efficiently implemented on stock-hardware distributed memory multicomputers. Specifically, we describe an experimental runtime system and compiler. The THAL runtime system recognizes and exploits the cost difference between local and remote message scheduling; it transparently supports actor's location independence; and, it implements non-blocking remote actor creation to improve utilization of computation resources. The THAL compiler incorporates a number of analysis and transformation techniques which work hand in hand with the runtime system. Among the techniques are: global data flow analysis to infer type information--the compiler optimizes code for each message send according to the type of its receiver expression; concurrency restoration through dependence analysis and source-to-source transformation; concurrency control with dependence analysis which allows multiple threads to be active on an actor with thread safety, i.e., with no interference between the threads. Experiments on a stock-hardware distributed memory multicomputer (CM-5) show that the compiler and the run-time system yield efficiency and scalability on applications with sufficiently large granularity which are comparable to the performance of other less flexible systems.","Made available in DSpace on 2015-09-25T20:20:51Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license.txt: 4848 bytes, checksum: 96035ab3f5e1c23cc7138a224ce498bd (MD5) 9737161.pdf: 3476516 bytes, checksum: 352aa705657e5c8d6be301e7aebdda30 (MD5) Previous issue date: 1997","Embargo set by: Seth Robbins for item 83162 Lift date: Forever Reason: Restricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETDs","Restricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETDs","U of I Only","117 p.","Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1997."],"dc:identifier":["http://hdl.handle.net/2142/81881","(MiAaPQ)AAI9737161"],"dc:language":["eng"],"dc:subject":["Computer Science"],"dc:title":["THAL: An Actor System for Efficient and Scalable Concurrent Computing"],"dc:type":["text"],"thesis:degree_discipline":["Computer Science"],"thesis:degree_level":["Dissertation"],"thesis:degree_name":["Ph.D."],"thesis:institution_name":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:26:17Z"}