| TCE stands for Thread-based Communication Environment. It has been developed at NPAC, to provide a system level support for data- and functional-parallel applications with client-server capabilities. |
| The most characteristic features of the environment are: User-level, portable multithreading, with prioritized, preemptive scheduling. |
| Message passing communication based on abstract communication objects - Ports and Channels. |
| Channels construction involves two Ports. They exclusively link two peers, providing a variety of different communication modes, including support for communication between heterogenous architectures. |
| Ports and Channels can be accessed by all threads within a process, and they can be freely passed between different TCE processes. Various system descriptors can be mapped onto TCE ports, therefore polymorphic operations on channels can refer to sockets, files, keyboard or other system devices. |
| The environment is currently operational on SunOS, Ultrix, OSF/1 and CM-5 architectures. |