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A functional model for describing and reasoning about time behaviour of computing systems

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Summary

We present a mathematical model of parallel and real time systems behaviour, suitable for problem specification, and for implementation description, analysis and proof. On one hand, this model allows a pure behavioural description mode, and on the other hand it takes into account a metric notion of time. A system is considered as a history transformer, and the history of a variable consists of the sequence of values assigned to it, together with the sequence of times when these assignments take place. A set of tools is proposed, in order to describe such histories, and to perform proofs about them. This model is illustrated by the specification, the description and the proof of a distributed bus arbiter.

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Caspi, P., Halbwachs, N. A functional model for describing and reasoning about time behaviour of computing systems. Acta Informatica 22, 595–627 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00263648

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