The concurrency models of Ada and occam—a practical comparison

Abstract A comparison of the concurrency models of Ada and occam is presented. This comparison is performed in terms of an Ada-to-occam compiler. A subset of the Ada programming language may be compiled allowing a study of how programs and algorithms expressed using the Ada concurrency model can be mapped to the occam concurrency model. The resultant occam code may then be executed on a transputer. This paper describes the Ada and occam concurrency models, highlights the major differences between them, discusses the problems encountered in trying to map concurrent Ada programs to equivalent occam programs as a result of these differences and explains how these problems were overcome in the present compiler.