Evaluating concurrency options in software specifications

An approach called PERFECT is described which evaluates the feasibility of proposed software concurrency architectures for a set of scenarios and a set of quality-of-service requirements. An evaluation is performed by constructing and simulating a virtual implementation which conforms to the specified behaviour and the specified concurrency architecture. For simulation, the execution of application activities and kernel primitives must be sequenced for each concurrent thread. The approach is successfully demonstrated on specified scenarios for a group communication server.