occam


Also found in: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Acronyms, Idioms, Wikipedia.

Ockham

, Occam
William of. died ?1349, English nominalist philosopher, who contested the temporal power of the papacy and ended the conflict between nominalism and realism
Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

occam

(language)
(Note lower case) A language based on Anthony Hoare's CSP and David May's EPL. Named after the English philosopher, William of Occam (1300-1349) who propounded Occam's Razor. The occam language was designed by David May of INMOS to easily describe concurrent processes which communicate via one-way channels. It was developed to run on the INMOS transputer but compilers are available for VAX, Sun and Intel MDS, inter alia.

The basic entity in occam is the process of which there are four fundamental types, assignment, input, output, and wait. More complex processes are constructed from these using SEQ to specify sequential execution, PAR to specify parallel execution and ALT where each process is associated with an input from a channel. The process whose channel inputs first is executed. The fourth constructor is IF with a list of conditions and associated processes. The process executed is the one with the first true condition in textual order. There is no operator precedence.

The original occam is now known as "occam 1". It was extended to occam 2.

Simulator for VAX.

Tahoe mailing list: <occam@sutcase.case.syr.edu>.

[David May et al, 1982. "Concurrent algorithms"].

["Occam", D. May, SIGPLAN Notices 18(4):69-79, 1983].
This article is provided by FOLDOC - Free Online Dictionary of Computing (foldoc.org)

occam

An early parallel processing language from Inmos Limited that was developed in the 1980s to handle concurrent operations. The Inmos Transputer executed occam almost directly. In the following statements, two items of data are read and incremented at the same time. PAR specifies that following statements are to be executed concurrently, and SEQ indicates that the following statements are executed sequentially. See transputer.

PARSEQchan1 ? item1item1 := item1 + 1SEQchan2 ? item2item2 := item2 + 1
Copyright © 1981-2019 by The Computer Language Company Inc. All Rights reserved. THIS DEFINITION IS FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY. All other reproduction is strictly prohibited without permission from the publisher.
Mentioned in ?
References in periodicals archive ?
Occam debuted in the wake of RoHS and was marketed as an answer to lead-free solders.
Disrupting design
One much debated, Occam's-razor-be-damned counterexample: there's no godly reason why the left recurrent laryngeal nerve (LRLN), which keeps us all from sounding like a whispering Minnie Mouse, has to lasso the heart on its way from the brain to the larynx, a detour the equivalent of driving from Louisville to St.
Voila! Another pain in the neck for intelligent design
Many are familiar with the Occam's Razor theory which implies, in a nutshell, that the simplest answer is most often the correct answer.
Occam's Ranger: SOG's Northwest Ranger makes a case for simple perfection
Occam Systems, which supplies technology used by colleges and universities to manage student accommodation, was sold in a transaction was financially backed by a high net-worth individual (Business Angel).
Taxing appointment agreed; A round up of news from the region's financial sector from in the past week
Upon the completion of the acquisition, each outstanding share of Occam Networks common stock (other than those shares with respect to which appraisal rights are available, properly exercised and not withdrawn) will be converted into the right to receive (a) $3.8337 per share in cash, without interest plus (b) 0.2925 of a validly issued, fully paid and non-assessable share of Calix common stock.
Calix to acquire Occam Networks
For Aaronovitch the scalpel most useful in excising the cancer of conspiracy theory is Occam's Razor.
No, Sir, that ain't History: Voodoo Histories, the David Aaronovitch book that attempts to falsify all Modern-day instances of Conspiracy, falls short Because, ironically, it ignores History
And the basis for this conclusion - William of Occam's razor.
RAZOR RULE APPLIES
The Gale/Montanaro thesis is interesting, but fails the Occam's razor test.
What's So Important About the Abdulmutallab Affair?
Conan Doyle, who famously said, "when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth," and the other Occam's Razor, of the true origins of which I was previously unaware - leave it to Mr.
Gloria's Bookshelf
The Franciscan Friar William of Occam said it best about 700 years ago in the form of the principle of parsimony, which we now know as Occam's Razor.
Occam's razor, resharpened: sometimes, out of the blue, comes a reminder that the best solutions to a problem are not necessarily the most complex
Si bien en la decada de 1970 sus intereses mudaron hacia la literatura, con la publicacion de Manual del Distraido (1980), Suenos de Occam (1983), El cielo de Sotero (1987) y La Fabula de las Regiones (1988), entre otros, y mas recientemente, la novela Eden, vida imaginada (2006), Alejandro Rossi no dejo de interesarse por el rumbo que tomaba la revista Critica y la filosofia analitica en Mexico.
In memoriam

Encyclopedia browser ?
Full browser ?