Real-time monitors are designed to filter and analyze patterns in collections of incoming data streams--for example, to convert low- level signal and image data into high-level descriptions. In short, they are a solution to the "data fusion" problem. This project implements the process-trellis software architecture as a programming methodology and tool for building parallel real-time monitors. The project will enable data fusion applications to exploit new developments in parallel computer hardware and processing. The process trellis supports hierarchical, multiprocess data fusion structures that convert incoming raw data into high-level abstractions. Intermediate processing is performed by numerous analysis procedures running asynchronously and in parallel, interacting only through the flow of data in the trellis. The trellis will be implemented using Linda (R), a commercial product of SCIENTIFIC Computing Associates, Inc., that provides convenient access to parallelism from within high-level languages like C or Fortran. This will lead to software that is not only efficient, but also portable across vastly different parallel architectures including both explicitly parallel computers and LANS of workstations functioning as parallel "hypercomputers."
