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McCarthy's amb cannot implement fair merge

  • Session 9 Semantics
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Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 1988)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 338))

Abstract

In this paper we establish that fair merge is a powerful non-determinate primitive that cannot be implemented in terms of other well-known primitives. It is well known that fair merge embodies countable non-determinacy. It has also been known that McCarthy's amb embodies countable non-determinacy. It had not been known, however, whether amb could implement a fair merge. We show that amb cannot implement fair merge even in dynamic dataflow networks. This settles a question posed by Abramsky over four years ago. Earlier work had suggested this result by showing that for static dataflow networks, one cannot implement fair merge using angelic merge.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science Department, Cornell University, USA

    Prakash Panangaden & Vasant Shanbhogue

Authors
  1. Prakash Panangaden
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  2. Vasant Shanbhogue
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Editor information

Kesav V. Nori Sanjeev Kumar

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© 1988 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Panangaden, P., Shanbhogue, V. (1988). McCarthy's amb cannot implement fair merge. In: Nori, K.V., Kumar, S. (eds) Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science. FSTTCS 1988. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 338. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-50517-2_90

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-50517-2_90

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-50517-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-46030-5

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