occam - what is it?

So what is this occam thing anyway?

It's a parallel computing language based on the CSP programming model designed by Tony Hoare. The main implementations of the language are currently on INMOS Transputers which were designed with the CSP programming model. Two versions of the language occam and occam2 have been produced so far with occam3 in the pipeline.
A portable and free occam compiler called SPOC has recently been released by the University of Southampton and other compilers are in progress.
If you are interested in the language, the draft occam3 manual dated March 1992 is available for to view.
It's a person. The short biography of William of Occam will tell you who he was and why we use his name

CSP is a programming methodology - Communicating Sequential Processes.

Professor C. A. R. Hoare FRS is a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) and a mathematician and is a consultant for Oxford Parallel and the Programming Research Group (PRG) at Oxford University, UK.

See also the documents at The Occam archive at Oxford University.