The Algebra of Synchronous Processes

Abstract

An algebraical theory called ASP is presented, describing synchronous cooperation of processes. The theory ASP was first mentioned in BERGSTRA & KLOP [4] as an alternative for the theory ACP, which works with asynchronous cooperation (see also in [5]). One of the main differences between ASP, as it is presented here, and the algebraic theory SCCS of MILNER [9] is the representation of parallelism, which is done by considering a computation step as a vector, each component of which represents an atomic action on a corresponding channel.

This paper concludes with an example, to give an idea how to work with ASP.