Modelling Distributed Systems

Distributed systems are multi-processor information processing systems whichdo not rely on the central shared memory for communication. The importanceof distributed systems has been growing with the advent of "computer networks"of a wide spectrum: networks of geographically distributed computers at one end,and tightly coupled systems built with a large number of inexpensive physicalprocessors at the other end. Both kinds of distributed system are made availableby the rapid progress in the technology of large-scale integrated circuits. Yetlittle has been done in the research on semantics and programming methodologiesfor distributed information processing systems.Our main research goal is to understand and describe the behaviour of suchdistributed systems in seeking the maximum benefit of employing multi-processorcomputation schemata.Hayes, J.E., D. Michie, and L. I. Mikulich (Eds.), Machine Intelligence 9, Ellis Horwood.