Programming Communicating Distributed Reactive Automata: the Weak Synchronous Paradigm

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present a new paradigm for reactive and real-time distributed programming: weak synchronism. We define a small language for communicating reactive automata, and characterize it by an operational semantics. We show that weak synchronism provides a deterministic semantics of concurrency and allows physical distributed implementations. This weak synchronous paradigm can then be extended to real-time programming, by defining a more general paradigm, a strong-weak synchronous coupling. Keyword codes: D.1.3; F.3.2; F.4.3 Keywords: Concurrent Programming; Semantics of Programming Languages; Formal Languages. 1. Introduction: Real-Time and Reactive Systems The concept of reactive system was introduced by D. Harel and A. Pnueli in [8] to describe systems which maintain a continuous interaction with their environment. D. Harel and A. Pnueli propose a dichotomy between what they call transformational and reactive systems. On the one hand, a transformational system a..