Mentat: An object-oriented macro data flow system

Mentat is an object-oriented macro data flow system designed to facilitate parallelism in distributed systems. Its underlying model of computation is the macro data flow model. The Macro data flow model is similar to the traditional, large grain data flow model with two differences: (1) Some macro actors are persistent actors that maintain state information between firings; (2) Program graphs are dynamic. Macro data flow programs are represented by dynamic structures called future lists that may be constructed and modified at run time. This paper discusses the motivation of the macro data flow model; the relationship between objects, actors, and tokens; the use of future lists; extensions to the programming language C++ for writing macro data flow programs; and the structure of a virtual macro data flow machine for executing macro data flow programs.