NTCCRT: A concurrent constraint framework for real-time interaction (extended version)
This work addresses synchronization issues in multimedia programming for artists and engineers, but it appears incremental as it applies an existing calculus to new tools.
The authors tackled the challenge of unpredictable behavior in multimedia interaction systems due to non-deterministic concurrency by proposing NTCCRT, a real-time interpreter for the ntcc calculus, which they demonstrated in Pure Data for machine improvisation and signal processing.
Writing multimedia interaction systems is not easy. Their concurrent processes usually access shared resources in a non-deterministic order, often leading to unpredictable behavior. Using Pure Data (Pd) and Max/MSP is possible to program concurrency, however, it is difficult to synchronize processes based on multiple criteria. Process calculi such as the Non-deterministic Timed Concurrent Constraint (ntcc) calculus, overcome that problem by representing multiple criteria as constraints. We propose using our framework Ntccrt to manage concurrency in Pd and Max. Ntccrt is a real-time capable inter- preter for ntcc. Using Ntccrt externals (binary plugins) in Pd we ran models for machine improvisation and signal processing.