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Denotational semantics of parallelism

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Semantics of Concurrent Computation

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 70))

Abstract

This paper studies the denotational semantics of programming language constructs whose operational semantics require interleaving of computations. In particular a semantics is given for recursion equations with a convergence test. A convergence test is a nondeterministic construct which selects among expressions according to which one converges (i.e. takes on a value) first. This denotational semantics is shown to be equivalent to an operational semantics.

This paper uses the powerdomain construction to handle nondeterminism. The new idea is the treatment of parallelism. It is neccessary to add new elements to the domains in order to be able to distinguish between nonterminating computations and partial values. This distinction cannot be used in writing semantic equations. It is only used in interpreting the meaning of complete computations in which case partial values can be ignored.

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Gilles Kahn

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© 1979 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Schwarz, J.S. (1979). Denotational semantics of parallelism. In: Kahn, G. (eds) Semantics of Concurrent Computation. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 70. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0022470

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0022470

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-09511-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-35163-4

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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