Models for name-passing processes: interleaving and causal

We study syntax-free models for name-passing processes. For interleaving semantics, we identify the indexing structure required of an early labelled transition system to support the usual π-calculus operations, defining Indexed Labelled Transition Systems. For non-interleaving causal semantics we define Indexed Labelled Asynchronous Transition Systems, smoothly generalizing both our interleaving model and the standard Asynchronous Transition Systems model for CCS-like calculi. In each case we relate a denotational semantics to an operational view, for bisimulation and causal bisimulation respectively. We establish completeness properties of, and adjunctions between, categories of the two models. Alternative indexing structures and possible applications are also discussed. These are first steps towards a uniform understanding of the semantics and operations of name-passing calculi.     

Behavioural equivalences of a probabilistic pi-calculus

Although different kinds of probabilistic π-calculus have been introduced and found their place in quantitative verification and evaluation,their behavioural equivalences still lack a deep investigation.We propose a simple probabilistic extension of the π-calculus,π p,which is inspired by Herescu and Palamidessi’s probabilistic asynchronous π-calculus.An early semantics of our π p is presented.We generalise several classic behavioural equivalences to probabilistic versions,obtaining the probabilistic(strong) barbed equivalence and probabilistic bisimulation for π p.Then we prove that the coincidence between the barbed equivalence and bisimilarity in the π-calculus is preserved in the probabilistic setting.     

A theory of bisimulation for the π-calculus

 We study a new formulation of bisimulation for the π-calculus [MPW92], which we have called open bisimulation (∼). In contrast with the previously known bisimilarity equivalences, ∼ is preserved by allπ-calculus operators, including input prefix. The differences among all these equivalences already appear in the sublanguage without name restrictions: Here the definition of ∼ can be factorised into a “standard” part which, modulo the different syntax of actions, is the CCS bisimulation, and a part specific to the π-calculus, which requires name instantiation. Attractive features of ∼ are: A simple axiomatisation (of the finite terms), with a completeness proof which leads to the construction of minimal canonical representatives for the equivalence classes of ∼; an “efficient” characterisation, based on a modified transition system. This characterisation seems promising for the development of automated-verification tools and also shows the call-by-need flavour of ∼. Although in the paper we stick to the π-calculus, the issues developed may be relevant to value-passing calculi in general. Received: June 11, 1993/November 28, 1994     

Algebraic Theories for Name-Passing Calculi

In a theory of processes the names are atomic data items which can be exchanged and tested for identify. A well-known example of a calculus for name-passing is the π-calculus, where names are additionally used as communication ports. We provide complete axiomatisations of late and early bisimulation equivalences in such calculi. Since neither of the equivalences is a congruence we also axiomatise the corresponding largest congruences. We consider a few variations of the signature of the language; among these, a calculus of deterministic processes which is reminiscent of sequential functional programs with a conditional construct. Most of our axioms are shown to be independent. The axiom systems differ only by a few simple axioms and reveal the similarities and the symmetries of the calculi and the equivalences.     

Comparing locality and causality based equivalences

For CCS [15] several noninterleaving semantics have been proposed among which causal bisimulation [9] and location equivalence [6] play a central role. To unify these two approaches this paper introduces a new transition system based onlocal andglobal causes. Bisimulation equivalence is parameterized by a functionf which evaluates the information on causes provided by the transitions. Appropriate instantiations off yield characterizations of causal bisimulations and location equivalence.     

Characterizing contextual equivalence in calculi with passivation

We study the problem of characterizing contextual equivalence in higher-order languages with passivation. To overcome the difficulties arising in the proof of congruence of candidate bisimilarities, we introduce a new form of labeled transition semantics together with its associated notion of bisimulation, which we call complementary semantics. Complementary semantics allows to apply the well-known Howe?s method for proving the congruence of bisimilarities in a higher-order setting, even in the presence of an early form of bisimulation. We use complementary semantics to provide a coinductive characterization of contextual equivalence in the HOπP calculus, an extension of the higher-order π-calculus with passivation, obtaining the first result of this kind. We then study the problem of defining a more effective variant of bisimilarity that still characterizes contextual equivalence, along the lines of Sangiorgi?s notion of normal bisimilarity. We provide partial results on this difficult problem: we show that a large class of test processes cannot be used to derive a normal bisimilarity in HOπP, but we show that a form of normal bisimilarity can be defined for HOπP without restriction.     

Complete inference systems for weak bisimulation equivalences in the π-calculus

Proof systems for weak bisimulation equivalences in the π-calculus are presented, and their soundness and completeness are shown. Two versions of π-calculus are investigated, one without and the other with the mismatch operator. For each version of the calculus proof systems for both late and early weak bisimulation equivalences are studied. Thus there are four proof systems in all. These inference systems are related in a natural way: the inference system for early equivalence is obtained from the one for late equivalence by replacing the inference rule for input prefix, while the inference system for the version of π-calculus with mismatch is obtained by adding a single inference rule for mismatch to the one for the version without it. The proofs of the completeness results rely on the notion of symbolic bisimulation.     

CoCasl at Work — Modelling Process Algebra

CoCasl[11], a recently developed coalgebraic extension of the algebraic specification language Casl[2], allows for modelling systems in terms of inductive datatypes as well as of co-inductive process types. Here, we demonstrate how to specify process algebras, namely CCS[10] and CSP[8,17], within such an algebraic-coalgebraic framework. It turns out that CoCasl can deal with the fundamental concepts of process algebra in a natural way: The type system of communications, the syntax of processes and their structural operational semantics fit well in the algebraic world of Casl, while the additional coalgebraic constructs of CoCasl cover the various process equivalences (bisimulation, weak bisimulation, observational congruence, and trace equivalence) and provide fully abstract semantic domains. CoCasl hence becomes a meta-framework for studying the semantics and proof theory of reactive systems.     

Time-Abstracted Bisimulation: Implicit Specifications and Decidability

In the last few years a number of real-time process calculi have emerged with the purpose of capturing important quantitative aspects of real-time systems. In addition, a number of process equivalences sensitive to time-quantities have been proposed, among these the notion of timed (bisimulation) equivalence. In this paper, we introduce atime-abstracting(bisimulation) equivalence and investigate its properties with respect to the real-time process calculus of Wang (Real-time behaviour of asynchronous agents,in“Proceedings of CONCUR90,” Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 458, Springer-Verlag, Berlin/New York, 1990). Seemingly, such an equivalence would yield very little information (if any) about the timing properties of a process. However, time-abstracted reasoning about a composite process may yield important information about the relative timing-properties of the components of the system. In fact, we show as a main theorem that such implicit reasoning will revealalltiming aspects of a process. More precisely, we prove that two processes are interchangeable in any context up to time-abstracted equivalence precisely if the two processes are themselves timed equivalent. As our second main theorem, we prove that time-abstracted equivalence is decidable for the calculus of Wang, using classical methods based on a finite-state symbolic, structured operational semantics.     

Refinement of actions and equivalence notions for concurrent systems

We study an operator for refinement of actions to be used in the design of concurrent systems. Actions on a given level of abstraction are replaced by more complicated processes on a lower level. This is done in such a way that the behaviour of the refined system may be inferred compositionally from the behaviour of the original system and from the behaviour of the processes substituted for actions. We recall that interleaving models of concurrent systems are not suited for defining such an operator in its general form. Instead, we define this operator on several causality based, event oriented models, taking into account the distinction between deadlock and successful termination. Then we investigate the interplay of action refinement with abstraction in terms of equivalence notions for concurrent systems, considering both linear time and branching time approaches. We show that besides the interleaving equivalences, also the equivalences based on steps are not preserved under refinement of actions. We prove that linear time partial order semantics are invariant under refinement. Finally we consider various bisimulation equivalences based on partial orders and show that the finest two of them are preserved under refinement whereas the others are not. Termination sensitive versions of these equivalences are even congruences for action refinement. Received 11 May 1998 / 19 June 2000     

Bisimilarity for the Region Calculus

A region calculus is a programming language calculus with explicit instrumentation for memory management. Every value is annotated with a region in which it is stored and regions are allocated and deallocated in a stack-like fashion. The annotations can be statically inferred by a type and effect system, making a region calculus suitable as an intermediate language for a compiler of statically typed programming languages.Although a lot of attention has been paid to type soundness properties of different flavors of region calculi, it seems that little effort has been made to develop a semantic framework. In this paper, we present a theory based on bisimulation, which serves as a coinductive proof principle for showing equivalences of polymorphically region-annotated terms. Our notion of bisimilarity is reminiscent of open bisimilarity for the -calculus and we prove it sound and complete with respect to Morris-style contextual equivalence.As an application, we formulate a syntactic equational theory, which is used elsewhere to prove the soundness of a specializer based on region inference. We use our bisimulation framework to show that the equational theory is sound with respect to contextual equivalence.     

Congruence of Bisimulation in a Non-Deterministic Call-By-Need Lambda Calculus

We present a call-by-need λ-calculus λ_ND with an erratic non-deterministic operator pick and a non-recursive let. A definition of a bisimulation is given, which has to be based on a further calculus named λ_≈, since the naïve bisimulation definition is useless. The main result is that bisimulation in λ_≈ is a congruence and coincides with the contextual equivalence. The proof is a non-trivial extension of Howe's method. This might be a step towards defining useful bisimulation relations and proving them to be congruences in calculi that extend the λ_ND-calculus.     

Contextual Labelled Semantics for Higher-order Process Calculi

In this paper, we study a contextual labelled transition semantics for Higher-Order process calculi. The labelled transition semantics are relatively clean and simple, and corresponding bisimulation equivalence can be easily formulated based on it. Besides we develop a novel approach to reason about behaviours of a higher-order substituted process P{Q/X}, based on which we can directly prove a very important result – factorisation theorem. To show the correspondence between our semantics and the well-established ones, we characterize our bisimulation in a version of barbed equivalence.     

A Partition Refinement Algorithm for the π-Calculus

The partition refinement algorithm is the basis for most of the tools for checking bisimulation equivalences and for computing minimal realisations of CCS-like finite state processes. In this paper, we present a partition refinement algorithm for the π-calculus, a development of CCS where channel names can be communicated. It can be used to check bisimilarity and to compute minimal realisations of finite control processes—the π-calculus counterpart of CCS finite state processes. The algorithm is developed for strong open bisimulation and can be adapted to late and early bisimulations, as well as to weak bisimulations. To arrive at the algorithm, a few laws, proof techniques, and four characterizations of open bisimulation are proved.     

‘Closed Interval Process Algebra’ versus ‘Interval Process Algebra’

Summary. In this paper we extend the theory of processes with durational actions that has been proposed in [1,2] to describe and reason about the performance of systems. We associate basic actions with lower and upper time bounds, that specify their possible different durations. Depending on how the lower and upper time bounds are fixed, eager actions (those which happen as soon as they can), lazy actions (those which can wait arbitrarily long before firing) as well as patient actions (those which can be delayed for a while) can be modelled. Processes are equipped with a (soft) operational semantics which is consistent with the original one and is well-timed (observation traces are ordered with respect to time). The bisimulation-based equivalence defined on top of the new operational semantics, timed equivalence, turns out to be a congruence and, within the lazy fragment of the algebra, refines untimed equivalences. Decidability and automatic checking of timed equivalence are also stated by resorting to a finite alternative characterization which is amenable to an automatic treatment by using standard algorithms. The relationships with other timed calculi and equivalences proposed in the literature are also established. Received: 22 May 1998 / 8 November 2000     

Refining the Undecidability Border of Weak Bisimilarity

Weak bisimilarity is one of the most studied behavioural equivalences. This equivalence is undecidable for pushdown processes (PDA), process algebras (PA), and multiset automata (MSA, also known as parallel pushdown processes, PPDA). Its decidability is an open question for basic process algebras (BPA) and basic parallel processes (BPP). We move the undecidability border towards these classes by showing that the equivalence remains undecidable for weakly extended versions of BPA and BPP. In fact, we show that the weak bisimulation equivalence problem is undecidable even for normed subclasses of BPA and BPP extended with a finite constraint system.     

Towards a theory of bisimulation for the higher-order process calculi

In this paper, a labelled transition semantics for higher-order process calculi is studied. The labelled transition semantics is relatively clean and simple, and corresponding bisimulation equivalence can be easily formulated based on it. And the congruence properties of the bisimulation equivalence can be proved easily. To show the correspondence between the proposed semantics and the well-established ones, the bisimulation is characterized as a version of barbed equivalence and a version of context bisimulation.     

On Deciding Readiness and Failure Equivalences for Processes

In this paper, we study the complexity of deciding readiness and failure equivalences for finite state processes and recursively defined processes specified by normed context-free grammars (CFGs) in Greibach normal form (GNF). The results are as follows: (1) Readiness and failure equivalences for processes specified by normed GNF CFGs are both undecidable. For this class of processes, the regularity problem with respect to failure or readiness equivalence is also undecidable. Moreover, all these undecidability results hold even for locally unary processes. In the unary case, these problems become decidable. In fact, they are Π^p₂-complete, We also show that with respect to bisimulation equivalence, the regularity for processes specified by normed GNF CFGs is NL-complete. (2) Readiness and failure equivalences for finite state processes are PSPACE-complete. This holds even for locally unary finite state processes. These two equivalences are co-NP-complete for unary finite state processes. Further, for acyclic finite state processes, readiness and failure equivalences are co-NP-complete and they are NL-complete in the unary case. (3) For finite tree processes, we show that finite trace, readiness, and failure equivalences are all L-complete. Further, the results remain true for the unary case. Our results provide a complete characterization of the computational complexity of deciding readiness and failure equivalences for several important classes of processes.