Thatched Partial Orders

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Description/Abstract

A thatch is a type of partial ordering which is most naturally described as a geometric construction. The geometry of these constructions is outlined in this note. A wait-and-see concurrent process may include any number of sub-processes, each regarded as a separate thread of execution. However if at any point the process launches a collection of concurrent threads it must wait and see how they terminate before proceeding. Each sub-process may also launch further sub-processes, which are also subject to the wait and see restriction. A wait-and-see process can be regarded as a thatch. This note describes some interesting mathematical properties of thatching that are relevant to these concurrent processes.