Fleet Programming Paradigms

I intend to use the streaming model as the basis for Admiral 2, particularly that of the StreamIt language [1]. In this model, a program consists of multiple independent filters, each of which consists of a steady-state function that computes a fixed number of outputs from a fixed number of inputs. These filters are composed hierarchically into a streaming graph, where edges correspond to the flow of data from one filter to another. Filters only communicate through these data streams1, and they can be run concurrently. The streaming model is conceptually similar to using inifinite moves to set up virtual ships in Fleet. The idea in both cases is to perform the same operation on many inputs and therefore amortize the cost of initialization across them. There are other benefits (and some drawbacks) to StreamIt of Fleet that I’ve already discussed in a previous memo [2].