Posets with Interfaces for Concurrent Kleene Algebra

Abstract

We introduce posets with interfaces (iposets) and generalise the serial composition of posets to a new gluing composition of iposets. In partial order semantics of concurrency, this amounts to designate events that continue their execution across components. Alternatively, in terms of decomposing concurrent systems, it allows cutting through some events, whereas serial composition may cut through edges only.We show that iposets under gluing composition form a category, extending the monoid of posets under serial composition, and a 2-category when enriched with a subsumption order and a suitable parallel composition as a lax tensor. This generalises the interchange monoids used in concurrent Kleene algebra.We also consider gp-iposets, which are generated from singletons by finitary gluing and parallel compositions. We show that the class includes the seriesparallel posets as well as the interval orders, which are also well studied in concurrency theory. Finally, we show that not all posets are gp-iposets, exposing several posets that cannot occur as induced substructures of gp-iposets.