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The Inner and Outer Algebras of Unified Concurrency

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Unifying Theories of Programming (UTP 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 11885))

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Abstract

Algebras have always played a critical role in Unifying Theories of Programming, especially in their role in providing the “laws” of programming. The algebraic laws form a triad with two other forms, namely operational and denotational semantics. In this paper we demonstrate that algebras are not just for providing external laws for reasoning about programs. In addition, they can be very beneficial for assisting in the development of theoretical models, most notably denotational semantics. We refer to the algebras used to develop a denotational model as “inner algebras”, while the resulting algebraic semantics we consider to be an “outer algebra”. In this paper we present a number of inner algebras that arose in the development of a fully compositional denotational semantics, called UTCP, for shared-state concurrency. We explore how these algebras helped to develop (and debug!) the theory, and discuss how they may assist in the ultimate aim of exposing the outer algebra of UTCP, which we expect to be very similar to Concurrent Kleene Algebra.

This work was supported, in part, by Science Foundation Ireland grant 13/RC/2094 to Lero - the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre (www.lero.ie).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    We have to apply healthiness conditions as well, discussed later.

  2. 2.

    A form of Herbrand interpretation!.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Andrew Butterfield

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  1. Andrew Butterfield
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Correspondence to Andrew Butterfield .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of York, York, UK

    Pedro Ribeiro

  2. Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil

    Augusto Sampaio

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Butterfield, A. (2019). The Inner and Outer Algebras of Unified Concurrency. In: Ribeiro, P., Sampaio, A. (eds) Unifying Theories of Programming. UTP 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11885. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31038-7_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31038-7_8

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