Data Flow Systems: Guest Editors' Introduction

Some 15 years ago, J. Rodriguez at MITI and D. Adams at Stanford2 began to work on research that eventually led to the development of concepts still in use today in data flow systems. Important advances have been made since that time, and many researchers are now investigating data flow concepts as an alternative to von Neumann machines and languages. Nevertheless, until this special issue of Computer, no attempt had been made to bring together a body of work on data flow systems and closely examine just how far research into this technology has progressed. In the pages that follow, the reader will be presented with an overview of the field, especially as it relates to high-speed computing. Included are articles by leading researchers in the field of data flow languages and graphs, and dynamic architectures. There is also an article that outlines the major problems with data flow systems from the point of view of experts who are not directly active in data flow research. Together, we hope these articles will stimulate further investigation into the practicality of data flow systems. Anyone with some background in computer languages and architecture, and with a rudimentary knowledge of compilers should find the material in this issue most interesting.