Avoiding diamonds in desynchronization

Abstract

The design of concurrent systems often assumes synchronous communication between different parts of a system. When system components are physically apart, this assumption becomes inappropriate. Desynchronization is a technique that aims to implement a synchronous design in an asynchronous manner by placing buffers between the components of the synchronous design. When queues are used as buffers, the so-called 'diamond property' (among others) ensures correct operation of the desynchronized design. However, this property is difficult to establish in practice. In this paper, we formally prove that the conditions for desynchronizability can be relaxed, and in particular the diamond property is no longer needed, when half-duplex queues are used as a communication buffer. Furthermore, we discuss how the half-duplex condition can be further relaxed when the diamond property can be partially guaranteed. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.