Multiprocessor Systems-on-Chips

15.1. Introduction

Intuitively, models of computation (MoCs) are abstract representations of computing systems. The term is almost as basic as computer science itself, going back to the earliest research in computer representations, including the work of Turing, Kleene, and Church in the 1930s. The earliest origins of the term are unclear, but it was not used by the 1930s researchers to describe their work. Although most textbooks and articles on MoCs seem to take for granted that its meaning is well understood, here we advance a definition, albeit mostly intuitive, discuss how MoCs have developed since the 1930s, and propose a possible future evolution.

An MoC captures, in an abstract manner, the relevant features of a computation. It defines ...