Posted: 15th November 2010

OUCL’s Bill Roscoe has published a new book entitled Understanding Concurrent Systems.

It succeeds his 1997 book Theory and practice of concurrency as the standard text for studying concurrency via Hoare's Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP), and contains much material on the theory and applications CSP developed in recent years.

CSP has been used extensively for teaching and applying concurrency theory, ever since the publication of the text Communicating Sequential Processes by C.A.R. Hoare in 1985. Both a programming language and a specification language, CSP helps users to understand concurrent systems, and to decide whether a program meets its specification. As a member of the family of process algebras, the concepts of communication and interaction are presented in an algebraic style.

Understanding Concurrent Systems serves as a comprehensive introduction to the field, in addition to providing material for a number of more advanced courses. A first point of reference for anyone wanting to use CSP or learn about its theory, the book also introduces other views of concurrency, using CSP to model and explain these. The text is fully integrated with CSP-based tools such as Failures-Divergences Refinement (FDR), and describes how to create new tools based on FDR. Most of the book relies on no previous knowledge of the theoretical background other than a basic knowledge of sets and sequences. Sophisticated mathematical arguments are avoided whenever possible.

Bill Roscoe has been Head of Department at Oxford University Computing Laboratory since 2003 and a Professor of Computer Science here since 1997

Understanding Concurrent Systems by A W Roscoe. ISBN: 978-1848822573