Task Frames

Abstract

Forty years ago Dijkstra introduced the current conventional execution of routines. It places activation frames onto a stack. Each frame is the internal state of an executing routine. The resulting application execution is not easily helped by an external system. This presentation proposes an alternative execution of routines. It places task frames onto the stack. A task frame is the call of a routine to be executed. The feasibility of the alternative execution is demonstrated by a crude implementation. As described elsewhere, an application which executes in terms of tasks can be provided by an external system with a transparent reliable, distributed, heterogeneous, adaptive, dynamic, real-time, parallel, secure or other execution. By extending the crude implementation, this presentation outlines a simple transparent parallel execution.