Who invented the cactus stack?

Can anyone help me to locate a literature reference for the concept of
a Cactus Stack? I have also heard it called a Saguaro Stack after a
particular species of cactus with a form such as:


                                                                !
                                                                ! !
                                                          ! ! ! !__!
                                                          !__! ! !
                                                                !__!__!
                                                                      !
                                                                      !


Each ! represents the stack frame for an instance of a procedure,
and in practice could be of any height.
Each of the branches of the tree represents a separate stack of frames which
must coexist with those to its left and right.


When implementing a language such as occam which supports parallel
processes with stack frames of statically determinable sizes, these stack
frames may be mapped onto a linear address space by allocating space
for all parallel branches which need to coexist in sequential blocks
of memory.


When the parallel processes have all terminated, all their stacks may be
reused.


I am writing a paper in which I need to refer to this concept and would
like to credit its inventor or an early user which I expect was over 20
years ago. Does anyone remember?


Michael Poole, Research Fellow, Computing Laboratory, University of Kent,
Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NF, England Tel:01227 827553
--

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