FT-Linda is a version of Linda. Linda is a parallel programming language whose most notable feature is a distributed shared memory called tuple space that can be used despite the lack of physical shared memory. FT-Linda is intended to support the programming of fault-tolerant parallel applications. The two main features of FT-Linda are stable tuple spaces and atomic guarded statements. The former provide protection against data loss, while the latter support synchronization and the execution of multiple tuple space operations despite failures or concurrency.

After a brief presentation of Linda and the specific problems that failures can cause, the authors present the design decisions of FT-Linda and give examples of its use. Next, implementation details and some initial performance results are given. The paper ends with a short presentation of related work.

The paper communicates research and implementation results in a well-organized and clear manner. It is intended for both parallel programming language designers and Linda programmers.

The authors state, however, that “all parts of the system have been implemented, but the final integration awaits the porting of Consul to a new version of the x-kernel.” Consequently, prospective FT-Linda programmers still have to wait, and performance results are either unavailable or not very relevant.