Abstract Inspired by P systems initiated by Gheorghe Pãun, we study a computation model over a multiset of communicating objects. The
objects in our model are instances of finite automata. They interact with each other by firing external t…
Abstract
Inspired by P systems initiated by Gheorghe Pãun, we study a computation model over a multiset of communicating objects. The
objects in our model are instances of finite automata. They interact with each other by firing external transitions between
two objects. Our model, called a service automaton, is intended to specify, at a high level, a service provided on top of
network devices abstracted as communicating objects. We formalize the concept of processes, running over a multiset of objects,
of a service automaton and study the computing power of both single-process and multiprocess service automata. In particular,
in the multiprocess case, regular maximal parallelism is defined for inter-process synchronization. It turns out that single-process
service automata are equivalent to vector addition systems and hence can define nonregular processes. Among other results,
we also show that Presburger reachability problem for single-process service automata is decidable, while it becomes undecidable
in the multiprocess case. Hence, multiprocess service automata can not be effectively simulated by vector addition systems.
- Content Type Journal Article
- DOI 10.1007/s11047-010-9206-0
- Authors
- Linmin Yang, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164, USA
- Yong Wang, Google Inc., Mountain View, CA 94043, USA
- Zhe Dang, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164, USA