Formal specification of multicomputers

Abstract

Formal Methods of specification can play an important role in exploring the behaviour of complex systems, as distributed systems or parallel computing. Lotos, based on algebra of processes, has been chosen as an international standard for specifying many systems.In this paper I show a model for a popular class of massively parallel machines: multicomputers. Such computers are considered the most promising architecture to achieve teraflops computational power. This paper shows a guide to employ the Lotos formal description technique in specifying problems on multicomputer architecture.The attention is mainly focused in evaluating several features of these machines, in particular those related to the network used to interconnect nodes (processors). In the way of studying characteristics of multicomputers I use two Lotos tools: TOPO and LOLA, both were designed inside the Lotosphere Project. LOLA allows simulation, testing and transformation of Lotos specifications and TOPO is used to obtain a prototype. This work defines a new application of formal methods: computer architecture. The new formal description technique Lotos gives to hardware designers a rigorous method for the verification, validation and development of multicomputers.