“A Distributed Pi-Calculus” by Matthew Hennessy is a significant work in the realm of process calculi, specifically focusing on distributed computing. Published in 2007, this book extends the foundational concepts of the pi-calculus—a formalism for describing concurrent systems—to address distributed computation.
The pi-calculus provides a mathematical framework for modeling concurrent systems, where processes communicate and synchronize with each other via message passing. Hennessy’s work extends this framework to encompass distributed systems, where processes may be located on different nodes of a network and communicate over possibly unreliable channels.
In “A Distributed Pi-Calculus,” Hennessy introduces the necessary extensions to the original pi-calculus formalism to capture the complexities of distributed computation, such as network topology, message passing over channels, and synchronization across distributed processes.
The book explores various aspects of distributed systems within the pi-calculus framework, including process mobility, network protocols, distributed algorithms, and fault tolerance. It provides formal definitions and operational semantics for modeling these distributed phenomena, enabling rigorous reasoning about the behavior and properties of distributed systems.
Overall, “A Distributed Pi-Calculus” serves as an essential resource for researchers and practitioners interested in formal methods for distributed computing. It provides a theoretical foundation and practical tools for modeling, analyzing, and reasoning about distributed systems using the pi-calculus formalism.