Limitations of synchronization primitives with conditional branching and global variables

A formal model of the process concept is presented. This model can represent sets of processes that use the synchronization primitive PV or one of the many generalizations of PV. The study of synchronization problems is then reduced to the study of relations between sets of processes. For one relation— “simulate”—it is possible to show that there are differences between several synchronization primitives. These differences show that the relative “power” of these synchronization primitives is not the same.