So nice of you to ask! What you are looking at is an example of the systems we study in Concurrency Theory. In short, it is an example of a mathematical formalisation of a simple internet protocol; the aim of our research is to design algorithms that can prove properties of these kinds of models.

The simulation on the homepage is running a fixed program modelling a server/client system. The orange boxes are the clients, the blue ones are servers; the green boxes are messages to the server (dark) or to the clients (light).

More precisely, the displayed animation is a visual simulation of the evolution of a π‑calculus program. The boxes are sequential processes, i.e. threads, and the dots are names, i.e. channels.

You can try the simulator and experiment with the π‑calculus by clicking here:

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I wrote the simulator in JavaScript and D3.js to support my presentation on the contents of my Ph.D. thesis. The code evolved from a simple prototype and I am in the process of rewriting it completely. I hope you will enjoy it even if it is unfinished!

Subscribe If you’d like to know more, watch this space for an upcoming write-up about the π‑calculus