Picture of per brinch hansen inventions

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Picture of per brinch hansen inventions

Friday, January 24, , By Abby Haessig. Two citations from Per Brinch Hansen on simplicity and programming — Writing is a rigorous test of simplicity: It is just not possible to write convincingly about ideas that cannot be understood. Home » Per Brinch Hansen ». Concurrent and Sequential Pascal, Solo Edison — a Multiprocessor Language Joyce Superpascal language In his research in computer science focused on concurrent programming.

Essays on Parallel Programming See below. Essays on Parallel Programming. In , his research in computer science focused on concurrent programming: Inspired by Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard's programming language Simula 67, he invented the monitor concept in In the United States, he also developed the first concurrent programming language, Concurrent Pascal, in Later, Brinch Hansen documented the historical development of these fundamental areas of computer science.

Together with Peter Kraft, he defined the computer architecture and instruction set for Regnecentralen's third computer, the RC , using ALGOL 60 as a hardware description language to produce a formal specification. Inexperienced with multiprogramming , he used a copy of Cooperating Sequential Processes [ 4 ] Edsger Dijkstra had sent him to understand process synchronization using semaphores , and then implemented a specialized RC real-time monitor for use in managing a fertilizer plant.

Peter Kraft and Charles Simonyi , who was still a teenager, wrote a p-code interpreter and data logging task programs that were compiled to p-code. In late , Brinch Hansen moved to Pittsburgh , accepting an invitation from Alan Perlis to visit the department of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University as a research associate, while he wrote the first systematic textbook on operating system principles.

In the spring of , after reading about the class concept invented by Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard for Simula 67, Brinch Hansen completed his text with a chapter on resource protection that proposed the first monitor notation, using shared classes. In July , Brinch Hansen joined the faculty of the California Institute of Technology Caltech as an Associate Professor of computer science, where he began work on defining a programming language with concurrent processes and monitors.

In April , he distributed a technical report on Concurrent Pascal. In May , he completed Solo, a single-user operating system for development of Concurrent Pascal programs. Next, he rewrote the original RC real-time scheduler in Concurrent Pascal, taking three days to write it, and three hours of machine time to systematically test it. When the Caltech computer science department shifted focus toward computer engineering and away from programming Brinch Hansen decided to leave, rather than to seek tenure there.

Joining the faculty as a tenured full professor, and first chair of a newly created computer science department, he led efforts to identify and attract top-notch faculty to build a first rate department. Later in , Brinch Hansen published the Distributed Processes language concept, proposing the use of remote procedure calls to synchronize processes running across a microcomputer network.

Also in , L. Mostek began a project to implement such a multiprocessor, with Brinch Hansen working as a consultant. While designing a multicomputer operating system for Danish company GN Elmi, Brinch Hansen concluded he needed a new language, this time leveraging the message passing paradigm of Hoare's CSP. After finding that neither he nor his family felt at home in Denmark, Brinch Hansen decided to return to the US, but discovered that their immigration status required them to do so very quickly.

Recognizing the scaling limitations of multiprocessors, however, Brinch Hansen sought a suitable multicomputer for further work. Acquiring a Meiko Computing Surface in , he began experimenting with scientific applications by developing parallel programs for Householder's method reduction and then N -body simulation as learning exercises, and was surprised to find that both programs had nearly identical control structures.

Concluding that both fit an "all-pairs paradigm," he then focused on exploring reusable parallel algorithm structures he termed "programming paradigms" or "generic programs" later, popularly known as " design patterns ". In his later years, Brinch Hansen published a retrospective of his most important papers, The Search for Simplicity , [ 20 ] a text for a course in programming for non-majors, Programming for Everyone in Java , [ 21 ] a retrospective on the evolution of operating systems, Classic Operating Systems: From Batch Processing to Distributed Systems , [ 22 ] and a retrospective on the evolution of concurrent programming, The Origin of Concurrent Programming: From Semaphores to Remote Procedure Calls On July 31, , Brinch Hansen died, shortly after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.

They married in and had two children, daughter Mette and son Thomas. In a career spanning five decades, Brinch Hansen made seminal contributions in the areas of operating systems, concurrent computing and parallel and distributed computing that were influential in shaping the development of those fields and advancing them from ad hoc techniques to systematic engineering disciplines.

It is not uncommon for a computer scientist to make a proposal without testing whether it is any good in practice. After spending 3 days writing up the monitor proposal and 3 years implementing it, I can very well understand this temptation. It is perhaps also sometimes a human response to the tremendous pressure on university professors to get funding and recognition fast.

Nevertheless, we must remember that only one thing counts in engineering: Does it work not "might it work" or "wouldn't it be nice if it did"? The RC multiprogramming system introduced the now-standard concept of an operating system kernel and the separation of mechanism and policy in operating system design. Modern microkernel architectures trace their roots to the extensible nucleus architecture of the RC Brinch Hansen's text, Operating System Principles , was the first comprehensive textbook on operating systems.

Eventually published in six languages English, Japanese, German, Czech, Polish and Serbo-Croatian , [ 1 ] it remained in print for decades, and years after the RC system it described had become outdated. In , nearly two decades after its initial publication, P. Plauger reviewed it, saying:. This book is terribly dated. It describes many of the RC's operating-system algorithms.

The RC is slow, small, and starved for peripherals by today's standards.