Synchronous programming language: Difference between revisions

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{{Short description|Programming language for programming reactive systems}}

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A '''synchronous programming language''' is a [[computer]] [[computer programming|programming]] [[programming language|language]] optimized for programming reactive systems, systems that are often interrupted and must respond quickly. Many such systems are also called [[Real-time computing|realtime]] systems, and are found often in [[Embedded system|embedded uses]]. The term 'reactive' is chosen to avoid ambiguities that occur sometimes when using the term 'realtime'. They are of growing importance.

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A '''synchronous programming language''' is a [[computer programming language]] optimized for programming [[reactive system]]s.

[[Computer system]]s can be sorted in three main classes:

# ''Transformational systems'' take some inputs, process them, deliver their outputs, and terminate their execution. A typical example is a compiler.

# ''Interactive systems'' interact continuously with their environment, at their own speed. A typical example is the web.

# ''Reactive systems'' interact continuously with their environment, at a speed imposed by the environment. A typical example is the [[automatic flight control]] system of modern airplanes. Reactive systems must therefore react to stimuli from the environment within strict time bounds. For this reason they are often also called [[Real-time computing|real-time systems]], and are found often in [[embedded system]]s.

'''Synchronous programming''', also called '''synchronous reactive programming''' ('''SRP'''), is a computer [[programming paradigm]] supported by synchronous programming languages. The principle of SRP is to make the same abstraction for programming languages as the synchronous abstraction in digital circuits. Synchronous circuits are indeed designed at a high level of abstraction where the timing characteristics of the electronic transistors are neglected. Each gate of the circuit (or, and, ...) is therefore assumed to compute its result instantaneously, each wire is assumed to transmit its signal instantaneously. A synchronous circuit is clocked and at each tick of its clock, it computes instantaneously its output values and the new values of its memory cells (latches) from its input values and the current values of its memory cells. In other words, the circuit behaves as if the electrons were flowing infinitely fast. The first synchronous programming languages were invented in France in the 1980s: [[Esterel]], [[Lustre (programming language)|Lustre]], and [[SIGNAL (programming language)|SIGNAL]]. Since then, many other synchronous languages have emerged.

The synchronous abstraction makes reasoning about time in a synchronous program a lot easier, thanks to the notion of '''logical ticks''': a synchronous program reacts to its environment in a sequence of ticks, and computations within a tick are assumed to be instantaneous, i.e., as if the processor executing them were infinitely fast. The statement "a||b" is therefore abstracted as the package "ab" where "a" and "b" are simultaneous. To take a concrete example, the Esterel statement "'every 60 second emit minute" specifies that the signal "minute" is exactly synchronous with the 60-th occurrence of the signal "second". At a more fundamental level, the synchronous abstraction eliminates the non-determinism resulting from the interleaving of concurrent behaviors. This allows [[deterministic]] semantics, therefore making synchronous programs amenable to formal analysis, [[formal verification|verification]] and certified code generation, and usable as [[formal specification]] formalisms.

In contrast, in the asynchronous model of computation, on a sequential processor, the statement "a||b" can be either implemented as "a;b" or as "b;a". This is known as the [[interleaving-based non determinism]]. The drawback with an asynchronous model is that it intrinsically forbids deterministic semantics (e.g., race conditions), which makes formal reasoning such as analysis and verification more complex. Nonetheless, asynchronous formalisms are very useful to model, design and verify distributed systems, because they are intrinsically asynchronous.

Also in contrast are systems with processes that basically ''interact synchronously''. An example would be systems based on the [[Communicating sequential processes|Communicating sequential processes (CSP)]] model, which allows deterministic (external) and nondeterministic (internal) choice.

==Synchronous languages==

*[[Argos{{see also|List of synchronous programming language|Argos]]languages}}

*[[SignalArgos (programming language)|SignalArgos]]

*[[Averest|Averest]]

*[[Atom (programming language)|Atom]] (a [[___domain-specific language]] in [[Haskell (programming language)|Haskell]] for hard realtime embedded programming)

*[[Averest|Averest]]

*[[Blech (programming language)|Blech]]

*[[ChucK]] (a synchronous reactive programming language for audio)

*[[Esterel]]<ref name="Berry Gonthier">G. Berry and G. Gonthier. The synchronous programming language ESTEREL: Design, semantics, implementation. ''Science of Computer Programming'', 19(2), 1992.</ref>

*[[Esterel]]

*[[LabVIEW]]
*[[LEA (programming language)|LEA]]

*[[Lustre (programming language)|Lustre]]

*[[EsterelPLEXIL]]

*[[Signal programming language|Signal]]

*[[SIGNAL (programming language)|SIGNAL]] (a dataflow-oriented synchronous language enabling multi-clock specifications)

*[[Secure Operations Language|SOL]]

*[[SyncCharts]]

==See External links also==

* [[Asynchronous programming]]

*[http://www-verimag.imag.fr/SYNCHRONE/ The Synchronous group]

* [[Concurrency (computer science)]]

*[http://www.ece.purdue.edu/~hankd/CARP/XPC/paper.html Unification of Synchronous and Asynchronous Models for Parallel Programming Languages] -- Proposes [[parallel languages]] based on [[C (programming language)|C]], lets programmers specify and manage parallelism on a broad range of computer architectures.

== References ==

* Nicolas Halbwachs. "Synchronous programming of reactive systems". Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993. http://www-verimag.imag.fr/~halbwach/newbook.pdf

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{{Programming language}}

== External links ==

[[Category:Synchronous programming languages| Synchronous programming language]]

*[http://www-verimag.imag.fr/SYNCHRONE/ The Synchronous group] at Verimag lab.

[[Category:Programming language classification]]

*[http://www.irisa.fr/espresso/Polychrony/ The SIGNAL programming language].

*[httphttps://wwwweb.archive.org/web/20050324021405/http://ece.purdue.edu/~hankd/CARP/XPC/paper.html Unification of Synchronous and Asynchronous Models for Parallel Programming Languages] -- Proposes—Proposes [[parallel languages]] based on [[C (programming language)|C]], lets programmers specify and manage parallelism on a broad range of computer architectures.

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[[Category:Synchronous programming languages| Synchronous programming language]]

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