6533b853fe1ef96bd12ac9e3

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Distributed Computing on Distributed Memory

Andreas Prinz

subject

Computer scienceSemantics (computer science)ConcurrencyDistributed computing020207 software engineering0102 computer and information sciences02 engineering and technology01 natural sciencesSpecification and Description LanguageUnified Modeling Language010201 computation theory & mathematics0202 electrical engineering electronic engineering information engineeringAbstract state machinesDistributed memoryMemory modelState (computer science)computercomputer.programming_language

description

Distributed computation is formalized in several description languages for computation, as e.g. Unified Modeling Language (UML), Specification and Description Language (SDL), and Concurrent Abstract State Machines (CASM). All these languages focus on the distribution of computation, which is somewhat the same as concurrent computation. In addition, there is also the aspect of distribution of state, which is often neglected. Distribution of state is most commonly represented by communication between active agents. This paper argues that it is desirable to abstract from the communication and to consider abstract distributed state. This includes semantic handling of conflict resolution, e.g. in connection with data replication. The need for abstract distribution of state is discussed and a novel semantics for concurrency based on an abstract distributed state is presented. This semantics uses runs over so-called multistates, and hides the internal communication for replica handling. This way, distributed computation is described over an abstract memory model.

yearjournalcountryeditionlanguage
2018-01-01
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01042-3_5