CPA History and Inspiration

The origin for the CPA series of conferences, which began as the OUG-X, and later WoTUG-X series, is the formal process algebra of Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) of C. A. R. Hoare. In the early 1980s, this gave rise to the occam programming language and the Transputer: a single chip microprocessor that provided hardware support for concurrency, communications and computation in equal measures. The combination of formal theory, programming language and scalable system architecture provided an unprecedented opportunity and challenge to systems engineering methodology. The OUG, WoTUG and, now, CPA conferences seek to answer that challenge and help meet the opportunity. The need has become crucial, given the concurrency at the (multi-)core of modern computational engines and the ever rising demands for complexity and scale required for modern applications.

Concurrency – its benefits and dangers – underlies all of the work reported at CPA. Originally focused on CSP, the conference now addresses all underlying models that are engaging and useful: especially important have become Milner's pi-calculus (for the dynamics that it captures), software transactional memory (for its composability) and other standards in common use (MPI, actors, ...). CPA welcomes researchers and developers working on any aspects of concurrency: from theory to application, hardware to software (and all stages in between), tool builders, language designers and library builders. CPA aims to promote excellence in engineering ... for which adherence to the principle of Ockham's Razor ("Keep it Simple, Stupid") is usually a good indicator.

The proceedings of the last twenty six conferences have been published by IOS Press, as part of their Concurrent Systems Engineering Series. This has fostered an extended international research and development community over the years and significantly contributed to many successful commercial applications.