Automated design of concurrent process systems

Abstract

We have developed a computer-aided design technique for a concurrent process system. A concurrent process system is a system that several processes concurrently access some common variables. In designing such a system, a designer must pay attention to mutual exclusion of common variable access, synchronization between processes, and prevention of deadlock. Our design technique helps a designer to solve these problems. In our design technique, a designer describes formally some processing requirements of an object system. In this description, each process in the system is specified as a set of processing steps and a partial order on the set. Then our design technique proposes to the designer some proper execution sequences for each process. After an execution sequence for each process is selected, our design technique establishes several critical regions and constructs a design proposal, based on the designer's requirements about mutual exclusion and consistency of common variable access. Because for the most part our design technique is mathematical operations on partially ordered sets, our design technique can be greatly aided by a computer, and then a designer can get a valid design proposal for a concurrent process system by using our design technique.