In: Information and Computation, Vol. 127, pages 41-61. 1996.
Also in: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 944: ICALP 95. Springer-Verlag, 1995. Extended abstract.
Abstract: Splitting is a simple form of action refinement that may be used to express the duration of actions. In particular, split-n subdivides each action into n phases. Petri nets N and N' are split-n-language equivalent, if split-n(N) and split-n(N') are language equivalent. It is known that these equivalences get finer and finer with increasing n.
This paper characterizes the limit of this sequence by a newly defined partial order semantics. This semantics is obtained from the interval-semiword semantics, which is fully abstract for action refinement and language equivalence, by closing it under a special swap operation. The new swap equivalence lies strictly between interval-semiword and step-sequence equivalence.