TRENDS 2012

IFIP WG 1.8 Workshop on

Trends in Concurrency Theory

Saturday, September 8, 2012
Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom
Part of The Newcastle Connection 2012

Description

TRENDS 2012 is an event organised by IFIP WG 1.8. It aims at bringing together researchers interested in concurrency theory and its applications to discuss recent trends, exchange ideas and discuss open problems. The event will take place in the morning of September 8, 2012 and will consist of four invited talks, followed by the yearly WG 1.8 business meeting.

Invited Speakers

Silvia Crafa (Università di Padova, Italy)
Ursula Goltz (TU Braunschweig, Germany)
Kohei Honda (Queen Mary & Westfield College, United Kingdom)
Bill Roscoe (University of Oxford, United Kingdom)

Programme

9.00-9.45: Bill Roscoe
CSP with priority and mobility
I will show that Hoare's original CSP language already contained -- if not explicit mobility -- all the ingredients needed to simulate a mobile dialect with dynamic process creation and channel passing. I will also show how, by extending CSP by a natural priority operator, one can express some surprising new things such characterising a form of "fair acceptance" or "unstable failures" model. This characterisation has an important industrial application. Both the mobile use of CSP, and priority, are supported by the refinement checker FDR.
The work presented in this talk is based on the final chapter of my book "Understanding Concurrent Systems", extended by more recent work.
9.45-10.30: Kohei Honda
Linking Computing Practice and Concurrency Theories
In this talk, we discuss how process algebras offer fundamental tools for understanding and establishing key engineering principles for distributed, communicating systems. After 70 years since the birth of Turing machine, we are entering the era where computing is predominantly about communication and concurrency. This new computing reality, from ubiquitous computing to large-scale distributed systems to many-core CPUs, is posing many basic engineering questions about concurrency, such as how we can position communication in computing systems, how we can structure them well, how we can specify and verify their properties, and how we can run them efficiently and economically. We shall explore, through concrete examples, how concurrency theories have accumulated basic tools for addressing these questions. Along the way we argue for the role of types in this endeavour, as a catalyst to link theories and practice. The talk will conclude with a thought on some of the research challenges whose solutions will be vital for addressing key engineering concerns in inherently concurrent computing.
10.30-11.00: Coffee
11.00-11.45: Ursula Goltz
On Sychronous and Asynchronous Interaction in Distributed Systems
(joint work with Rob van Glabbeek, Uwe Nestmann, Kirstin Peters and Jens-Wolfhard Schicke-Uffmann)
When considering distributed systems, it is a central issue how to deal with interactions between components. Here we investigate the paradigms of synchronous and asynchronous interaction in the context of distributed systems. We formalise a general concept of distributed systems as sequential components interacting asynchronously. We define a corresponding class of Petri nets, called LSGA nets, and precisely characterise those system specifications which can be implemented as LSGA nets up to a suitable equivalence notion. This yields a precise characterisation of distributable nets in terms of a semi-structural property. This characterisation provides a formal proof that the interplay between choice and synchronous communication is a key issue for distributability. In fact, a related result may be obtained in process algebras using a semantic characterisation of the same property in terms of step transition systems.
11.45-12.30: Silvia Crafa
Process Calculi and Actor model: two concurrent models of concurrency or two abstraction levels?
The Actor model and Process Calculi are two mathematical models of concurrent computation that share some similarities but diverge in many ways. They both have been proposed in the '70ies and they evolved "concurrently" with mutual influences. In this talk we will discuss the assets produced by the distinctive key features of the two models, providing insights and trying to device further cross-fertilizations.
12.30-13.00: IFIP WG 1.8 Business Meeting

Participation

Participation, both to the workshop and to the IFIP WG 1.8 meeting, is open to everybody.

Please register for TRENDS 2012 via the registration page of The Newcastle Connection 2012. Deadline for early registration is August 3, 2012.

Organizers

Jos Baeten (CWI, The Netherlands)
Bas Luttik (Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands)

IFIP WG 1.8 on Concurrency Theory

The aims of IFIP WG 1.8 on Concurrency Theory are:

  • To develop theoretical foundations of concurrency, exploring frontiers of existing theoretical models like process algebra and process calculi, so as to obtain a deeper theoretical understanding of concurrent and parallel systems.
  • To promote and coordinate the exchange of information on concurrency theory, exchanging ideas, discussing open problems, and identifying future directions of research in the area.
The activities of this WG encompass all aspects of concurrency theory and its applications.

Page maintained by Bas Luttik Last modified: Fri Jul 13 14:15:12 CEST 2012