Welcome to the homepage of Com S 641 - Semantic Models for Programming Languages.

The main theme in Spring 2004 is "communicating and mobile systems". Communication is a fundamental and integral part of computing, whether between different computers on a network, or between components within a single computer. Programs can be built from communicating parts, rather than adding communication as an extra level of activity. As a result, programs proceed by means of communication.

In Com S 641 Spring 2004, we will study programming language models for concurrent distributed interactive systems. The main focus will be on the pi-calculus that provides a formal model of concurrent computation based upon the notion of naming, in which the topology of communication can evolve dynamically during evaluation.

The pi-calculus differs from other models of communicating behavior mainly in its treatment of mobility. The movement of a piece of data inside a computer program is treated exactly the same way as the transfer of a message - or indeed an entire computer program - across the Internet. One can also describe networks, which reconfigure themselves.

The pi-calculus is very simple but powerful. Its most prominent notion is that of a name, and it has two important ingredients: the concept of behavioral (or observational) equivalence, and the use of a new theory of types to classify patterns of interactive behavior. The Internet and its communication protocols fall within the scope of the theory just as much as computer programs, data structures, algorithms, and programming languages.

Instructor:	Markus Lumpe
	Department of Computer Science
	113 Atanasoff Hall
	Email: lumpe@cs.iastate.edu
	Phone: 4-2410
	Offices hours: TBA

Please check the Announcements section on a regular basis to find out about class related news. If you have any comments or questions, please use the link above to send me email.