Discrete Absolute Timing

Abstract

In the previous chapter, we introduced a version of ACP with relative timing and time measured on a discrete time scale. In this chapter, we will introduce a version of ACP with absolute timing and time measured on a discrete time scale. The version with absolute timing is generally considered to be less simple than the one with relative timing. Our main reason to consider absolute timing as well is that there are applications of process algebra with timing to which absolute timing is better suited than relative timing. It is likely that there are also applications for which it is convenient to use both absolute timing and relative timing. We obtain a generalization of both the version with absolute timing and the version with relative timing by adding a mechanism for parametric timing, called discrete initial abstraction, to the version with absolute timing. Thus, we integrate absolute timing and relative timing in an extension of the version with absolute timing.