The Expressive Power of Synchronizations

A synchronization is a mechanism allowing two or more processes to perform actions at the same time. We study the expressive power of synchronizations gathering more and more processes simultaneously. We demonstrate the nonexistence of a uniform, fully distributed translation of Milner’s CCS with synchronizations of n + 1 processes into CCS with synchronizations of n processes that retains a “reasonable” semantics. We then extend our study to CCS with symmetric synchronizations allowing a process to perform both inputs and outputs at the same time. We demonstrate that synchronizations containing more than three input/output items are encodable in those with three items, while there is an expressivity gap between three and two.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: LICS
• Authors: Cosimo Laneve, Antonio Vitale
• Keywords: Automated Reasoning, Expressive Power, LICS 2010, Milner’s CCS, Symmetric Synchronizations