Parisian Master of Research in Computer Science
Master Parisien de Recherche en Informatique (MPRI)

Concurrency (24h, 3 ECTS)

Course director: Emmanuel Haucourt

Academic year 2024 - 2025

Teacher

Emmanuel Haucourt (professional web page)

Goals

In view of studying concurrency in a continuous setting, we introduce topology, geometry, and order theory needed to define a semantics of a restriction of the language introduced by E. W. Dijkstra.

French and English

French. However, questions asked in english will be answered in english.

Plan of the Course and Material

Slides

Lecture 1

A QUICK OVERVIEW OF CONCURRENCY THEORY

PARALLEL AUTOMATA META LANGUAGE: Syntax, Control Flow Graph, Abstract Machine

CONSERVATIVE PROGRAMS: Potential Functions, Discrete Models

Lecture 2

AN ALGEBRAIC TOPOLOGY TEASER: Categories, Topology, Functors, Connectedness

METRIC SPACES: Functor terminology, Categories of metric spaces, Metric graphs

LOCALLY ORDERED METRIC GRAPHS: Partially ordered spaces, Ordered atlases, Basic properties, Ordered atlas on metric graphs

Lecture 3

MODELS: Cartesian product, From discrete to geometric models, Examples, Geometric vs Discrete, The motivating theorem, From geometric to smooth models

HOMOTOPY OF PATHS: Undirected case, Directed case, Relation to geometric models

INDEPENDANCE: Syntactical independence, Model independence, Observational independence, Comparison

Lecture 4

ISOTHETIC REGIONS: Boolean structure, Additional operators

FACTORING ISOTHETIC REGIONS: Free commutative monoids, Monoids of homogeneous languages, Homogeneous languages and isothetic regions

Lecture 5

FUNDAMENTAL CATEGORY: Abstract setting, Directed path functor, Natural congruences, Basic properties and computations

CATEGORY OF COMPONENTS: Motivation, Loop-free categories, Systems of weak isomorphisms, Construction, Properties, Examples, Finite connected loop-free categories

Bibliography

Books

  • Fajstrup, L., Goubault, É., Haucourt, E., Mimram, S., and Raussen, M.
    Directed Algebraic Topology and Concurrency. Springer, 2016.
  • Brown, R. Topology and Groupoids. BookSurge, 2006.
  • Higgins, P. J. Categories and Groupoids. Van Nostrand-Reinhold, 1975.
  • Hansen, P. B. The Origin of Concurrent Programming:
    From Semaphores to Remote Procedure Calls
    . Springer, 2002.

Articles

  • Dijkstra, E. W. Cooperating Sequential Processes. In Genuys, F. (ed.)
    Programming Languages: NATO Advanced Study Institute. Academic Press, 1968.
  • Fajstrup, L., Goubault, É., and Raussen, M. Algebraic Topology and Concurrency.
    Theoretical Computer Science 357(1):241–278, 2006. Presented at Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science in 1998 (London).
  • Haucourt, E. The geometry of conservative programs.
    Mathematical Structures in Computer Science, 2018.
  • Haucourt, E. Non-Hausdorff parallelized manifolds over geometric models of conservative programs. HAL, 2024.

Basic Category Theory

  • Awodey, S. Category Theory. Clarendon Press. Oxford, 2006.
  • Leinster, T. Basic Category Theory. Cambridge University Press, 2014.
  • Roman, S. An Introduction to the Language of Category theory. Birkhäuser, 2017.

More advanced books:

  • Mac Lane, S. Categories for the Working Mathematician (2nd ed.). Springer, 1998.
  • Riehl, E. Category Theory in Context. Dover, 2016.

Related courses

Models of programming languages: domains, categories, and games (2.2)

Distributed algorithms on shared memory (2.18.2).

Exam

7 or 14 (to be decided) march 2025, 8h45 - 11h45, Sophie Germain building, room 1002.

Calendar and Time Schedule

8h45 - 11h45, Sophie Germain building, room 1002

13, 20 december 2024

3, 10, 17, 24, 31 january 2025

7 february 2025

Option: cancel the 20th of december or the 3rd of january course and add a course on the 14th of february, to be decided during the first session.

 
Universités partenaires Université Paris-Diderot
Université Paris-Saclay
ENS Cachan École polytechnique Télécom ParisTech
ENS
Établissements associés Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie CNRS INRIA CEA