Lecture Modelling and Analysing Concurrent Systems

Contents

The course introduces mathematical descriptions of systems whose components execute concurrently and communicate with one another. It follows the interleaving approach, in which concurrent behaviour is represented through the possible orderings of sequential actions. Milner’s Calculus of Communicating Systems provides the language for describing the components and their composition.

The main topics are:

• The syntax and behaviour of the Calculus of Communicating Systems.
• Behavioural equivalences for comparing concurrent processes.
• Logical specifications of correctness properties.
• Modelling and analysing mutual-exclusion protocols with software tools.

These topics connect the construction of a system model with mathematical arguments about its observable behaviour. The course was given at the RIO 2023 Summer School of Informatics in Río Cuarto, Argentina.

Further reading and tools

The accompanying textbook is Reactive Systems: Modelling, Specification and Verification by Luca Aceto, Anna Ingólfsdóttir, Kim Guldstrand Larsen, and Jiří Srba. The CAAL tool supports experimentation with process descriptions, behavioural equivalences, and logical properties.