In computer science, Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) is a formal language for describing patterns of interaction in concurrent systems. It is a member of the family of mathematical theories of concurrency known as process algebras, or process calculi. CSP was highly influential in the design of the occam programming language, and also influenced the design of programming languages such as Limbo and Go.
CSP was first described in a 1978 paper by C. A. R. Hoare, but has since evolved substantially. CSP has been practically applied in industry as a tool for specifying and verifying the concurrent aspects of a variety of different systems, such as the T9000 Transputer, as well as a secure ecommerce system. The theory of CSP itself is also still the subject of active research, including work to increase its range of practical applicability (e.g., increasing the scale of the systems that can be tractably analyzed).
Read more about Communicating Sequential Processes: History, Informal Description, Tools, Related Formalisms, Comparison With The Actor Model
Famous quotes containing the word processes:
“The vast results obtained by Science are won by no mystical faculties, by no mental processes other than those which are practiced by every one of us, in the humblest and meanest affairs of life. A detective policeman discovers a burglar from the marks made by his shoe, by a mental process identical with that by which Cuvier restored the extinct animals of Montmartre from fragments of their bones.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)