At 10:08 PM -0400 6/18/05, Wirt Atmar wrote:

>When he writes about a "signal-based, synchronous" model, he *is* describing
>a finite state automaton. And in that regard, I don't mind a bit giving away
>the two most important take-home lessons of the class:
>
>The First Rule of Open-Loop Programming: "Never do it."
>The First Rule of Asynchronous Programming: "Never do it."
>
>All devices, whether they are software- or hardware-based, interact with
>their environments through an alphabet of signals and triggers. You, as the
>designer, want to expel every bit of probabilitistic behavior out of their design.
>Everything you do, you want to make as simple as possible -- and you want it to
>be 100%, fully deterministic.

To add more chile to Wirt's soup, you might want to review Ivan Sutherland's
Turing-Award material:
http://research.sun.com/async/Publications/KPDisclosed/micropipelines/cmicropipelines.pdf

And even some of Ivan's asynchronous material:
http://research.sun.com/async/


But don't get out of sync in the process ;-)

While enjoying the asynchronous nature of hp3000-L, I remain your most
devoted and devilishly synchronous friend,

  _______________
 |               |
 |               |
 |            r  |  Alfredo                  http://www.adager.com
 |          e    |
 |        g      |  F. Alfredo Rego
 |      a        |  Manager, R & D Labs
 |    d          |  Adager Corporation
 |  A            |  Sun Valley, Idaho 83353-3000            U.S.A.
 |               |
 |_______________|

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