Deterministic Coordination Across Multiple Timelines

We discuss a novel approach for constructing deterministic reactive systems that revolves around a temporal model that incorporates a multiplicity of timelines. This model is central to Lingua Franca (LF), a polyglot coordination language and compiler toolchain we are developing for the definition and composition of concurrent components called reactors, which are objects that react to and emit discrete events. Our temporal model differs from existing models like the logical execution time (LET) paradigm and synchronous languages in that it reflects that there are always at least two distinct timelines involved in a reactive system; a logical one and a physical one—and possibly multiple of each kind. This paper explains how the relationship between events across timelines facilitates reasoning about consistency and availability across components in Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS).