A Calculus of Value Broadcasts

Paper in proceeding, 1993

Computation can be modelled as a sequence of values, each broadcast by one agent and instantaneously audible to all those in parallel with it. Listening agents receive the value; others lose it. Subsystems interface via translators; these can scramble values and thus hide or restrict them. Examples show the calculus describing this model to be a powerful and natural programming tool. Weak bisimulation, a candidate for observational equivalence, is defined on the basis that receiving a value can be matched by losing it.