Actors as a coordinating model of computation

Abstract

This paper relates two prominent models of concurrent computation, namely Actors and the π-calculus . We build on a thesis that proclaims - Actors enact the role of a coordinating model of computation. We enrich the Actor model by defining a mechanism for achieving a higher level of abstraction. This helps in reasoning with collections of Actors termed Actor Troupes . We identify a notion of interaction equivalence between Actor Troupes; and provide a semantic foundation for the enriched Actor model, in terms of the π-calculus - which has emerged as the canonical process calculus for the semantic analysis of object- based concurrent systems. Furthermore, we show that the algebraic notion of barbed bisimilarity in the π-calculus, corresponds precisely to interaction equivalence of the corresponding Actor Troupes