Research Seminar - April 12, 2001

Abstract

A new approach to deriving efficient, product-form solutions in Markovian process algebra (MPA) using properties of reversed processes will be presented. The compositionality of MPAs is directly exploited, allowing a large class of hierarchically constructed systems to be solved for their state probabilities at equilibrium. New results on both reversed stationary Markov processes and MPA itself are included, resulting in a mechanisable proof in MPA notation of Jackson's theorem for product-form queueing networks. Several examples are used to illustrate the approach.

The Author
Peter Harrison is currently a Professor of Computing Science at Imperial College, London where he became a lecturer in 1983. He graduated at Christ's College Cambridge as a Wrangler in Mathematics in 1972 and went on to gain Distinction in Part III of the Mathematical Tripos in 1979, winning the Mayhew prize for Applied Mathematics. He obtained his Ph.D. in Computing Science at Imperial College in 1979. He has researched into analytical performance modelling techniques and algebraic program transformation for some twenty years, visiting IBM Research Centers for two summers in the last decade. He has written two books, had over 100 research papers published in his research areas and held a series of research grants, both national and international. The results of his research have been exploited extensively in industry, forming an integral part of commercial products such as Metron's Athene Client-Server capacity planning tool. He has taught a range of subjects at undergraduate and graduate level, including Operating Systems: Theory and Practice, Functional Programming, Parallel Algorithms and Performance Analysis.