We are going to describe the design and implementation of a communication system for large AI projects, capable of supporting various software components in a heterogeneous hardware and programming-language environment. The system is based on a modification of the channel approach introduced by Hoare (1978). It is a three-layered approach with a de facto standard network layer (PVM), core routines, and interfaces to five different programming languages together with support for the transparent exchange of complex data types. A special component takes over name service functions. It also records the actual configuration of the modules present in the application and the created channels.We describe the integration of this communication facility in two versions of a speech-to-speech translation system, which differ with regard to quality and quantity of data distributed within the applications and with regard to the degree of interactivity involved in processing.
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