Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
asynchronous communication
reversible computation
CCS
causal consistency
On Asynchrony and Reversibility in CCS
🤖 AI Summary
This study addresses the theoretical gap in reversible process calculi, which are largely confined to synchronous settings, by investigating the integration of asynchronous communication with reversible computation. We propose CCSa, an asynchronous variant of CCS, along with its reversible extension rCCSa. Building upon the Phillips-Ulidowski framework and Lanese’s axiomatic system, our approach employs unique key annotations to explicitly model the generation and consumption of message events, thereby enabling computation rollback that preserves causal dependencies. This work makes a pioneering contribution by introducing reversible semantics into asynchronous CCS, establishing a causally consistent reversible model. Furthermore, we rigorously prove that rCCSa satisfies causal consistency, ensuring that computations can be precisely rolled back to causally equivalent states. These results fill a critical theoretical void in the field of reversible concurrent computation.
📝 Abstract
Asynchronous communication is a fundamental feature of modern distributed systems, where messages are emitted without requiring immediate synchronization with receivers. In process calculi, this behaviour is typically modelled by separating message emission from message consumption. At the same time, reversible computation has emerged as an important paradigm for analysing concurrent systems, enabling computations to be undone while preserving causal dependencies between actions. While reversible semantics have been extensively studied for synchronous process calculi such as CCS, their integration with asynchronous communication remains largely unexplored. In this paper we investigate the interaction between asynchrony and reversibility in the setting of CCS. We first introduce CCSa, an asynchronous variant of CCS in which output actions generate explicit message entities that can later be consumed by matching input actions. We then define rCCSa, a reversible extension of CCSa obtained by adapting the framework of Phillips and Ulidowski. In rCCSa, prefixes and messages are annotated with unique keys that record message emission and consumption events, allowing computations to be reversed while preserving causal dependencies. We show that the resulting reversible semantics satisfies causal consistency, ensuring that computations can be reversed exactly up to causal equivalence. The proof relies on the axiomatic framework for reversible computation proposed by Lanese et al.
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
Asynchronous communication
Reversible computation
CCS
Causal consistency
Unique keys
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