A synthesis method for designing shared-resource systems

In system synthesis, one needs to derive from a given set of processes a system design which reflects exactly the functionalities of the processes and is free from erroneous situations such as deadlock and capacity overflow. This is especially important for shared-resource systems, in which errors are easily induced because of the sharing of common resources among different competing processes. In this paper, a synthesis method is proposed for designing shared-resource systems. It begins with specifying the given processes as augmented marked graphs. These augmented marked graphs are then synthesized through the fusion of common places which represents the shared resources. The net so obtained serves to represent the integrated system which reflects exactly the functionalities of the processes in the sense that the event sequences as well as the pre-conditions and post-conditions of each event occurrence are preserved. Based on the known properties of augmented marked graphs, the system properties such as liveness, boundedness and reversibility can be analysed effectively. The method is applied to manufacturing system design. Promising results are obtained.