The Design and Implementation of Concurrent Input/Output Facilities in ACT++ 2.0

ACT++ 2.0 is the most recent version of a class library for concurrent programming in C++. Programs in ACT++ consist of a collection of active objects called actors. Actors execute concurrently and cooperate by sending request and reply messages. An agent, termed the behavior of an actor, is responsible for processing a single request message and for specifying a replacement behavior which processes the next available request message. One of the salient features of ACT++ is its realization of I/O as an actor operation. A special type of actor, called an interface actor, provides a high level interface for a file. Interface actors are sent request messages whenever I/O is necessary and can also transparently perform asynchronous I/O. ACT++ has been implemented on the Sequent Symmetry multiprocessor using the PRESTO threads package.