Stochastic Petri net evaluation techniques in plant automation: tuning performance indices for distributed applications

We report the results of an investigation aiming at experimenting the use of Generalized Stochastic Petri Nets (GSPN), a formal method which allows to model a concurrent application with an explicit representation of timing constraints, and to evaluate its performance over a target parallel architecture. We focus on the definition and use of a set of indices suitable to characterise an application in terms of its performance and to support its mapping over a parallel architecture, guided by the training over a case study taken from the ENEL R&D activity in real time plant automation. The effort spent to extend and to bring a relatively consolidated theory (GSPN) near to the industrial user needs, may be seen as the first original contribution of the paper.