Conditional Communication in the Presence of Priority

In this paper the behavior of conditional communication in the presence of priority will be described. In the theory of CSP, conditional communications are expressed by a (external) choice construct—also known as the alternative construct—by which the choice of one communication out of a set of communications is non-deterministic. In practice, some communication can be more important than others, so that, the choice is deterministic. Therefore, one can distinguish two prioritized alternative constructs; a symmetric alternative construct (ALT) and an asymmetric alternative construct (PRIALT). Current formal semantics and implementations of the ALT and PRIALT are based on the priorities of communication and not related to the surrounding priorities of communicating processes. This can result in a structural mismatch that can cause performance problems. In this paper a practical solution for realizing fair and unfair conditional communication in the presence of the PAR and the PRIPAR will be discussed.