An Extension to Computing Elements in Erlang for Actor Based Concurrent Programming

Along with the development of multicore architectures and cloud computing, concurrent programming and computation becomes a huge challenge for application developers. Distributed environment turns into complexity and unpredictability. So it is important to improve programming models on language level to make it possible for programmers unfamiliar with distributed systems to build large-scale applications. Erlang is an actor-based functional programming language that provides language level elements for concurrency. It has capability of describing large quantities of concurrent actions by multiple-process, which communicates asynchronously by sending and receiving messages. But it lacks of data structures and mechanism of language level for inherent concurrent units with a simple way of interaction, which may impede programmers in concurrent programming. Comparing with other computing element models such as Active Object and Concurrent Agent, we extend Erlang with a new computing element called "EIC_Unit" and a way of interaction by "futures". It makes programmers to develop concurrent applications more easily and convenient in a distributed environment.