Bibliographic Details
| Title: |
List Processing in Real Time on a Serial Computer. |
| Authors: |
Baker, Jr., Henry G.1 |
| Source: |
Communications of the ACM. Apr1978, Vol. 21 Issue 4, p280-294. 15p. |
| Subjects: |
List processing (Electronic computers), Electronic data processing, Computer programming, Electronic file management, Database management, Real-time programming |
| Abstract: |
This article focuses on problems related to classical list processing techniques. Using the method given in the article, a computer could have list processing primitives built in as machine instructions and the programmer would still be assured that each instruction would finish in a reasonable amount of time. A real-time list processing system has the property that the time required by each of the elementary operations is bounded by a constant independent of the number of cells in use. This property does not guarantee that the constant will be small enough for a particular application on a particular computer, and hence has been called "pseudo-real-time" by some. In all but the most demanding applications, the proper choice of hardware can reduce the constants to acceptable values. The model described in the article consists of a memory, that is, a one-dimensional array of words, each of which is large enough to hold the representation of a non-negative integer which is an index into that array; and a central processing unit, which has a small fixed number of registers the size of a word. |
| Database: |
Engineering Source |
