Generative Communication in Linda

Source: Mendeley metadata page for the ACM paper Authors: David Gelernter Date: 1985-01 Venue: ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems 7(1)

Key points

• Defines coordination by publishing tuple-structured messages into a shared computation environment instead of sending them directly to named peers.
• Tuples persist independently until some process consumes them, which decouples producers and consumers in both identity and time.
• The model creates a dynamic global namespace for work, facts, and requests, making it a strong foundation for asynchronous multi-agent coordination.
• Linda’s value is not only parallelism but late binding: agents do not need to know in advance which specific peer will handle a datum or a task.