Summary: A Type­theoretic Approach to Deadlock­freedom of
Asynchronous Systems
Samson Abramsky Simon Gay
University of Edinburgh Royal Holloway, University of London
Rajagopal Nagarajan
University of California, Berkeley
&
Imperial College, London
Abstract
We present a type­based technique for the verification of deadlock­freedom in
asynchronous concurrent systems. Our approach is to start with an interaction
category such as ASProc, where objects are types containing safety specifica­
tions and morphisms are processes. We then use a specification structure to
add information to the types so that they specify stronger properties. The extra
information in this case concerns deadlock­freedom, and in the resulting cate­
gory ASProc D , combining well­typed processes preserves deadlock­freedom. It
is also possible to accommodate non­compositional methods within the same
framework. The systems we consider are asynchronous, hence issues of diver­
gence become significant; our approach incorporates an elegant treatment of both
divergence and successful termination. As an example, we use our methods to

Source: Abramsky, Samson - Computing Laboratory, University of Oxford

Collections: Computer Technologies and Information Sciences