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On interprocess communication

Part I: Basic formalism

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Abstract

A formalism for specifying and reasoning about concurrent systems is described. Unlike more conventional formalisms, it is not based upon atomic actions. A definition of what it means for one system to implement a higher-level system is given and justified. In Part II, the formalism is used to specify several classes of interprocess communication mechanisms and to prove the correctness of algorithms for implementing them.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Systems Research Center, Digital Equipment Corporation, 130 Lytton Avenue, 94301, Palo Alto, CA, USA

    Leslie Lamport

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  1. Leslie Lamport
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Additional information

Dr. Lamport is a member of Digital Equipment Corporation's Systems Research Center. In previous incarnations, he was with SRI International and Massachusetts Computer Associates. The central topic of his research has been concurrency, and he can writeTEX macros and chew gum at the same time.

Much of this research was performed while the author was a member of the Computer Science Laboratory at SRI International, where it was sponsored by the Office of Naval Research Project under contract number N00014-84-C-0621 and the Rome Air Development Command Project under contract number F30602-85-C-0024

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Lamport, L. On interprocess communication. Distrib Comput 1, 77–85 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01786227

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