%T Support for occam channels via dynamic switching in multi\-transputer machines
%A  Peter Jones,  Alan Murta
%E  Charlie Askew
%B OUG\-9: Occam and the Transputer \-\- Research and Applications
%X The authors are motivated by the disparity between the
   arbitrarily large degree of inter\-process connectivity
   allowed in the occam model of computation (by means of occam
   channels) and the implementation of that model on the Inmos
   transputer (under the familiar four links per processor
   constraint). A communication technique has been developed
   and implemented on the ParSiFal machine which addresses this
   problem. The method involves a novel use of switching
   hardware. In normal use, links between transputers in a
   variable topology array such as the ParSiFal machine are
   arranged using switching hardware to form a static network
   before the application is loaded. This study explores the
   run\-time reconfiguration of the switch network under the
   direction of transputers executing user code, by means of a
   request\-resource / relinquish\-resource protocol.