The IOA Language and Toolset: Support for Designing, Analyzing, and Building Distributed Systems

分布式和并行计算机系统正变得越来越普遍和复杂。新的应用如计算机支持的协同工作系统正在这些平台上出现，并行科学和工程计算长期以来一直使用并行来实现高性能。这些系统中的许多都有重要的正确性、性能和容错要求。然而，它们经常使用相互交织和复杂的协议，这使得它们很难构建和推理。这个项目研究管理这种复杂性的结构化方法，这些方法在不同的抽象级别上查看系统，并将其视为交互组件的并行组合。用于实现这一点的特定方法是I/O自动机模型，该模型以前被用来描述和验证分布式算法和分布式系统设计。该模型具有简单的外部行为概念，基于组件的外部动作的线性跟踪，并允许使用模拟关系来组合和关联组件(自动机)。这里的新研究将开发部分IOA编程语言和工具集，以支持使用I/O自动机的分布式和并行编程。还将尝试扩展定时和混合I/O自动机。新的工具和技术将允许在高抽象级别对各种系统进行建模和分析。

Distributed and parallel computer systems are becoming increasingly common and complicated. New applications such as computer-supported cooperative work systems are appearing on these platforms, and parallel scientific and engineering computations have long used parallelism for high performance. Many of these systems have important correctness, performance, and fault-tolerance requirements. However, they often use intertwined and complicated protocols that make them difficult to build and reason about. This project studies structured approaches to managing this complexity, which view the system at different levels of abstraction and as parallel compositions of interacting components. The particular approach used to do this is the I/O automaton model, which has previously been used to describe and verify distributed algorithms and distributed system designs. The model has a simple notion of external behavior based on linear traces of external actions of the components, and allows the components (automata) to be composed and related using simulation relations. The new research here will develop parts of the IOA programming language and toolset to support distributed and parallel programming using I/O automata. Extensions for timed and hybrid I/O automata will also be attempted. The new tools and techniques will allow a variety of systems to be modeled and analyzed at a high level of abstraction.