Multi-media Parallel
Workstations 
Multi-media parallel workstations are very demanding as far as
their effective programming is concerned.
On the hardware side, sufficient computational power can only
be achieved by multi-processor systems, possibly aided by
task-specific processors.
On the software side, the interaction with the user must be
improved to cope with the increasing richness and complexity.
Multiple communication channels are available and their handling
has to be coordinated.
Therefore a new package, working in a unix/X11
environment, is being developed to allow
the implementation of highly portable applications (in which an almost
optimal performance is guaranteed on every platform).
This package is characterized by its capability to treat heterogeneous data
(images, text, sound, ...) and to support a powerful and flexible
graphical interface.
The hierarchical approach to object definition
guarantees maximum freedom in the creation of complex data structure,
while a type-independent kernel offers such basic services as
object management (creation, destruction, file I/O),
object sharing among applications (and eventually among different machines),
loading-on-demand of processing libraries, ...
The graphical library allows a continuous monitoring of processed data
through a different number of formats.
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