This then implies that the communications interface should be the lowest level of the EC++ model. Note that this definition is of the communications interface, and not the communications implementation. It is clear that within any parallel C++ system which introduces parallelism at an object level then these base objects will be require to communicate. For this reason this model proposes a standard interface to the communications implementation. In any instantiation of EC++, these communications may be implemented in very different manners - from shared memory communication to message passing systems offered by PVM or MPI. If the communications requirements of EC++ are expressed within the language in a standard interface then it ensures that all EC++ implementations will appear to communicate in a similar fashion. The actual underlying mechanism of communication can be implemented in the most suitable manner for a particular hardware implementation.
Thus the EC++ definition will be of the interface to the communications medium and not of any communications implementation. This will ensure that the same model will fit on different hardware types which use different communications models.