Networks of communicating processes and their (de-)composition

In this paper we present a general framework within which a study of networks of processes can be conducted. It is based upon the mathematical technique to abstract from irrelevant detail. We start out with a large class of objects and some operations upon them. Depending upon a correctness criterion to be imposed, some of these objects turn out to be equivalent. The resulting space of equivalence classes and operations upon them is, under certain conditions, the (fully) abstract space of interest for that particular correctness concern. We use this approach to study networks for which we assume the communications to be asymmetric and asynchronous. We impose the correctness criterion of absence of computation interference. The resulting abstract space turns out to be the space of delay-insensitive specifications. As operator we study composition of networks. The composition operator on the resulting space is shown to have a surprisingly simple factorization property, the prove of which turns out to be very simple due to the approach taken.