TY  - JOUR
A1  - Bordihn, Henning
A1  - Kutrib, Martin
A1  - Malcher, Andreas
T1  - On the computational capacity of parallel communicating finite automata
JF  - International journal of foundations of computer science
N2  - Systems of parallel finite automata communicating by states are investigated. We consider deterministic and nondeterministic devices and distinguish four working modes. It is known that systems in the most general mode are as powerful as one-way multi-head finite automata. Here we solve some open problems on the computational capacity of systems working in the remaining modes. In particular, it is shown that deterministic returning and non-returning devices are equivalent, and that there are languages which are accepted by deterministic returning and centralized systems but cannot be accepted by deterministic non-returning centralized systems. Furthermore, we show that nondeterministic systems are strictly more powerful than their deterministic variants in all the four working modes. Finally, incomparability with the classes of (deterministic) (linear) context-free languages as well as the Church-Rosser languages is derived.
KW  - Automata systems
KW  - cooperating systems
KW  - formal languages
KW  - theory of computation
Y1  - 2012
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1142/S0129054112500062
SN  - 0129-0541
VL  - 23
IS  - 3
SP  - 713
EP  - 732
PB  - World Scientific
CY  - Singapore
ER  -