BIB-VERSION:: CS-TR-v2.0
          ID:: SBCS//stark/stability.dvi
       ENTRY:: July 24, 1994
ORGANIZATION:: State University of New York at Stony Brook, Computer Science
       TITLE:: Stability and Sequentiality in Dataflow Networks
        TYPE:: Preprint
      AUTHOR:: Panangaden, Prakash, Shanbhogue, Vasant, Stark, Eugene W.
     CONTACT:: Eugene W. Stark, Department of Computer Science,
                   SUNY at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY 11794-4400
                   Tel: 516-632-8444 <stark@cs.sunysb.edu>
	DATE:: November, 1989
   RETRIEVAL:: HTTP from BSD7.CS.SUNYSB.EDU with the URL
		   http://bsd7.cs.sunysb.edu/~stark/REPORTS/stability.ps.gz
       NOTES:: A version of this paper appeared as:
                  P. Panangaden, V. Shanbhogue, E. W. Stark
                  "Stability and Sequentiality in Dataflow Networks,"
                  Automata, Languages, and Programming,
                  pp. 308-321
                  M. S. Paterson (ed.)
                  Volume 443 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science
                  Springer-Verlag, 1990

ABSTRACT::

The class of *monotone input/output automata* has been shown in
the authors' previous work to be a useful operational model for
dataflow-style networks of communicating processes.  An interesting
class of problems arising from this model are those that concern the
relationship between the input/output behavior of automata to the
structure of their transition graphs.  In this paper, we restrict our
attention to the subclass of *determinate* automata, which compute
continuous functions, and we characterize classes of determinate
automata that compute: (1) the class of functions that are *stable*
 in the sense of Berry, and (2) the class of functions that are
*sequential* in the sense of Kahn and Plotkin.

END:: SBCS//stark/stability.dvi