Abstract
We present a process algebra with an explicit notion of location, and give an operational semantics for it that distinguishes between processes with different distributions. We then introduce a denotational semantics parameterised by a topology over the set of locations; this topology allows observers to regard some locations as indistinguishable. We show that the denotational semantics is fully abstract if the topology satisfies the separation axiom T1, and that it coincides with the usual interleaving operational semantics if it is indiscrete, thus giving a criteria for when a given notion of 'indistinguishable location' corresponds to completely distributed or interleaved settings.
The algebra we consider is then extended to allow communication between different locations. A natural communication operator gives rise to a form of expansion theorem which allows us to extend full abstraction to this setting.
Support from the Royal Society (via an ESEP fellowship at the GMD, Bonn) and the Australian Research Council is gratefully acknowledged.
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© 1993 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Murphy, D. (1993). Observing located concurrency. In: Borzyszkowski, A.M., Sokołowski, S. (eds) Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science 1993. MFCS 1993. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 711. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-57182-5_48
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-57182-5_48
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