Classification-Based Optimization of Dynamic Dataflow Programs

Dataflow Programming

The concept of dataflow representation was introduced by Sutherland in 1966 as a visual way to describe a sequence of arithmetic statements (Sutherland, W. R. (1966)). Then, the first dataflow programming language was presented by Dennis in 1974 (Dennis, J. B. (1974)). In this language, a program is modeled as a directed graph where the edges represent the flow of data and the nodes describes control and computation.

Thus, a dataflow program is defined as a graph composed of a set of computational units interconnected by communication channels. The one presented in Figure 1 contains a network of five components interconnected using communication channels. In the dataflow approach, the communication corresponds to a stream of data composed of a list of tokens.

Figure 1.

A dataflow graph