An Inter-entry Invocation Selection Mechanism for Concurrent Programming Languages

Application-level message passing is supported by many concurrent programming languages. Such languages allow messages to be generated by invoking an entry. Messages are removed from an entry by an invocation selection mechanism. Such mechanisms may allow selection from a set of entries (multi-way receive). Many concurrent languages provide support for multi-way receives, but they are limited in their expressive power. This paper presents three proposed inter-entry selection mechanisms. The proposed mechanisms overcome the limitations of the existing mechanisms. Each of these mechanisms allows an invocation selection algorithm to examine the entire set of pending invocations (and their parameters) as part of the invocation selection process. These mechanisms are analyzed and compared both qualitatively and quantitatively.