Technical Report: DCC-98-3

Compiling Process Calculi

 Luis Lopes, Fernando Silva and Vasco T. Vasconcelos (*)

DCC & LIACC
Universidade do Porto
Rua do Campo Alegre, 823 4150 Porto, Portugal
 March 1998

Abstract

Despite extensive theoretical work on process-calculi, abstract machine specifications and implementations of actual computational models are still scarce. Moreover, a general framework for compiling languages based on these calculi is still elusive.

We propose a core assembly language onto which process-calculi based languages may be compiled and present a specification for a self-contained abstract machine that runs this assembly code. We also include compilation examples of features of well known calculi and discuss possible optimizations. Finally, we report preliminary performance results obtained with an implementation of the abstract machine coupled with an experimental language based on the TyCO-calculus.

Keywords: Process-Calculi, Concurrency, Abstract-Machine, Compilation, Implementation.
(*) Departamento de Informática, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal.