Concurrent Systems

The CSP archive

25 Years of CSP, London, UK, 7-8 July 2004
CPA2004: Communicating Process Architectures 2004, Oxford, UK, 6-8 September 2004

The CSP archive contains information relevant to the process algebra CSP (Communicating Sequential Processes), originally devised by Prof. Sir Tony Hoare. It is available via anonymous FTP. The CSP model-checking tool FDR developed by Bill Roscoe et al. and marketed by Formal Systems may be of particular interest. See also FDR2 and other CSP software.

The original paper on CSP (now essentially of historical interest) is:

Communicating Sequential Processes, C.A.R. Hoare. Communications of the ACM 21(8):666-677, August 1978. (Reprinted in J.P. Bowen and M.G. Hinchey, High-Integrity System Specification and Design, Springer-Verlag, FACIT series, pages 303-329, 1999.)

The original definitive and classic book on CSP is:

Communicating Sequential Processes, C.A.R. Hoare. Prentice Hall International Series in Computer Science, 1985. ISBN 0-13-153271-5 (0-13-153289-8 PBK).
3rd most cited computer science reference as listed by CiteSeer ResearchIndex.

See also:

Concurrent and Real-time Systems: The CSP Approach, S. Schneider. Wiley, 1999. ISBN 0-471-62373-3.

The Theory and Practice of Concurrency, A.W. Roscoe. Prentice Hall International Series in Computer Science, 1997. ISBN 0-13-674409-5.

Concurrent Systems: Formal Development in CSP, M.G. Hinchey and S.A. Jarvis. McGraw-Hill International Series in Software Engineering, 1995. ISBN 0-07-707649-4.

The Modelling and Analysis of Security Protocols: The CSP Approach, Peter Ryan, Steve Schneider, Michael Goldsmith, Gavin Lowe and Bill Roscoe. Addison-Wesley, 2000. ISBN 0-201-67471-8.

For document preparation using LaTeX2e, the csp.sty style file by Jim Davies supports typesetting of CSP and the Z notation. See the associated LaTeX source documentation.

See also:

CSP information from WoTUG.
CSP software from Formal Systems.
Tools for CSP.
csp2B tool. Combination of CSP and B specifications.
The occam archive.
CCSP - an execution environment for CSP programs from the University of Missouri - Rolla, USA.
CCS - Calculus of Communicating Systems, a related algebra for concurrent systems.
Pi calculus, another related algebra for concurrent systems.
Java Communicating Sequential Processes (JCSP) library. (See also here.)

Maintained by Jonathan Bowen as part of the LSBU Museophile archive.

Last updated 22 December 2004.