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Ada '83 Language Reference Manual

Copyright 1980, 1982, 1983 owned by the United States Government. Direct reproduction and usage requests to the Ada Information Clearinghouse.


9. Tasks

The execution of a program that does not contain a task is defined in terms of a sequential execution of its actions, according to the rules described in other chapters of this manual. These actions can be considered to be executed by a single logical processor.

Tasks are entities whose executions proceed in parallel in the following sense. Each task can be considered to be executed by a logical processor of its own. Different tasks (different logical processors) proceed independently, except at points where they synchronize.

Some tasks have entries. An entry of a task can be called by other tasks. A task accepts a call of one of its entries by executing an accept statement for the entry. Synchronization is achieved by rendezvous between a task issuing an entry call and a task accepting the call. Some entries have parameters; entry calls and accept statements for such entries are the principal means of communicating values between tasks.

The properties of each task are defined by a corresponding task unit which consists of a task specification and a task body. Task units are one of the four forms of program unit of which programs can be composed. The other forms are subprograms, packages and generic units. The properties of task units, tasks, and entries, and the statements that affect the interaction between tasks (that is, entry call statements, accept statements, delay statements, select statements, and abort statements) are described in this chapter.

Note:

Parallel tasks (parallel logical processors) may be implemented on multicomputers, multiprocessors, or with interleaved execution on a single physical processor. On the other hand, whenever an implementation can detect that the same effect can be guaranteed if parts of the actions of a given task are executed by different physical processors acting in parallel, it may choose to execute them in this way; in such a case, several physical processors implement a single logical processor.

Sub-topics:

References: abort statement, accept statement, delay statement, entry, entry call statement, generic unit, package, parameter in an entry call, program unit, rendezvous, select statement, subprogram, task body, task specification.

Rationale references: 13 Tasking

Style Guide references: 4.1.7 Tasks, 4.2.4 Hiding Tasks, 6 Concurrency, 7.4 Tasking


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