Superposed stochastic automata: a class of stochastic Petri nets amenable to parallel solution

Abstract

B. Plateau (1985) introduced an efficient way for solving stochastic processes that are derived from the composition of stochastic automata by making extensive use of the Kronecker (tensor) algebra for matrices. The author applies that efficient solution to a class of stochastic Petri nets (SPN) that has been called superposed stochastic automata (SSA). The solution has been implemented both with sequential and parallel programs. SSA are a rather restricted subclass of SPN, but the extension to the general case doesn't appear to pose any theoretical problem.<>