ALFred, a protocol compiler for the automated implementation of distributed applications

This paper describes the design and the prototyping of a compiling tool for the automated implementation of distributed applications: ALFred. This compiler starts from the formal specification of an application written in ESTEREL and then integrates end-to-end communication functions tailored to the application characteristics (described in the specification); it finally produces a high performance implementation. The paper describes the communication architecture associated with the approach. The compiler consists of a control compiler, also called ALF compiler, and a data manipulation compiler (the ILP compiler) that combines data manipulation functions in an efficient way (the ILP loop). The ALFred compiler has been designed to allow the development and the analysis of non-layered high performance communication architectures based on ALF and ILP.