ASTRA-an asynchronous remote procedure call facility

A transport-independent asynchronous RPC (remote procedure call) mechanism (ASTRA) that combines the advantages of both RPC and message-passing IPC (interprocess communication) has been designed and implemented. ASTRA calls do not block the caller (client) and the replies can be received as and when they are needed, thus allowing the client execution to proceed locally in parallel with the server invocation. All the calls are received and executed by the server in the order called by the client. ASTRA is unique among other asynchronous RPC systems in allowing its users to explicitly specify whether low-latency or high-throughput is required for a call, and in providing highly optimized lightweight intramachine calls. ASTRA is built within the framework of the SHILPA distributed computing environment