Introduction

BAP Online Manuals : XWIO: X-Windows Front Server : Introduction
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5.1. Introduction

The BRAIN AID PROLOG system is a parallel PROLOG system designed for use on parallel Transputer machines. It provides several operating system like features that are rather unknown to the Transputer OCCAM or C programmers. These features include network resource management, multiple process host communication, multiple applications, source level debugging and many more.

Some of these features require host communication abilities that can not be satisfied by the standard I/O servers found with the development tools for OCCAM or C. It was necessary to develop a new I/O server concept.

The traditional approach to host I/O on Transputer systems is based on OCCAM protocols and requires a specific process on the host Transputer. Only this process communicates with the host server.

BAP contains a transparent message passing system. The host server is fully integrated into this scheme and now seems to be just another PROLOG process somewhere in the network, receiving and sending PROLOG messages from any process wishing to communicate with it. No extra interface process on the host Transputer is required.

To allow any process to request I/O functions at any time naturally requires a host operating system that is capable of multitasking.

The BAP I/O servers currently run under several flavours of UNIX and MS Windows. Although Windows is not really an operating system, its multitasking capabilities are sufficient to run a host server for your Transputer system.

This documentation focuses on the UNIX version of the server, Xwio. As the name implies, xwio uses the X Window system as a user interface. Usage and behaviour should not differ significantly between different UNIX versions. For details on the xwio release for your UNIX, refer to the release notes shipped with BAP.

Xwio also is responsible for network management, reset and application loading. These functions are accessed via the Console window

Another important task is the support of source level debugging of parallel processes, and maintenance of text and graphics windows.

To find out, what UNIX versions or other operating systems are supported, contact support .


BAP Online Manuals : XWIO: X-Windows Front Server : Introduction
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Next: Starting xwio