Design and validation of a message-passing system

The paper describes a case study for designing and validating the core of a message-passing communication system. The approach is based on the use of the Petri Net Workbench, the protocol validation language, PROMELA, and its simulator/validator, SPIN. By using these tools, a protocol and underlying hardware for communicating between two heterogeneous computer systems is designed and validated. A reachability analysis is performed which includes a check for live- and dead-lock system states.<
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