Probabilistic Asynchronous pi-Calculus

Oltea Mihaela Herescu, Catuscia Palamidessi

Abstract: We propose an extension of the asynchronous π-calculus with a notion of random choice. We define an operational semantics which distinguishes between probabilistic choice, made internally by the process, and nondeterministic choice, made externally by an adversary scheduler. This distinction will allow us to reason about the probabilistic correctness of algorithms under certain schedulers. We show that in this language we can solve the electoral problem, which was proved not possible in the asynchronous π-calculus. Finally, we show an implementation of the probabilistic asynchronous π-calculus in a Java-like language.