Characterizations of delay-insensitive communication protocols
T Tom Verhoeff · TU/e Research Portal · 1989
This paper studies protocols for asynchronous communication over an interface consisting of unidirectional channels.In asynchronous communication, the sender can initiate a transmission without cooperation of the receiver.Contrasting with traditional data-flow networks, the channels that we consider do not synchronize at the receiving end: messages, once on their way, are delivered regardless of the readiness of the receiver to accept them.The situation where a message is delivered to an unready receiver is called computation interference.A protocol is said to be deiay-insensitive when it can be guaranteed-without making assumptions about propagation delays-that computation interference cannot occur.We give several characterizations of delay-insensitive protocols and a new prooHor the Fundamental Characterization Theorem.The emphasis is on the mathematical treatment of the concepts involved.