TY - CONF AB - Fault-tolerant distributed algorithms play an important role in ensuring the reliability of many software applications. In this paper we consider distributed algorithms whose computations are organized in rounds. To verify the correctness of such algorithms, we reason about (i) properties (such as invariants) of the state, (ii) the transitions controlled by the algorithm, and (iii) the communication graph. We introduce a logic that addresses these points, and contains set comprehensions with cardinality constraints, function symbols to describe the local states of each process, and a limited form of quantifier alternation to express the verification conditions. We show its use in automating the verification of consensus algorithms. In particular, we give a semi-decision procedure for the unsatisfiability problem of the logic and identify a decidable fragment. We successfully applied our framework to verify the correctness of a variety of consensus algorithms tolerant to both benign faults (message loss, process crashes) and value faults (message corruption). AU - Dragoi, Cezara AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Veith, Helmut AU - Widder, Josef AU - Zufferey, Damien ID - 1392 TI - A logic-based framework for verifying consensus algorithms VL - 8318 ER - TY - CONF AB - Probabilistic programs are usual functional or imperative programs with two added constructs: (1) the ability to draw values at random from distributions, and (2) the ability to condition values of variables in a program via observations. Models from diverse application areas such as computer vision, coding theory, cryptographic protocols, biology and reliability analysis can be written as probabilistic programs. Probabilistic inference is the problem of computing an explicit representation of the probability distribution implicitly specified by a probabilistic program. Depending on the application, the desired output from inference may vary-we may want to estimate the expected value of some function f with respect to the distribution, or the mode of the distribution, or simply a set of samples drawn from the distribution. In this paper, we describe connections this research area called \Probabilistic Programming" has with programming languages and software engineering, and this includes language design, and the static and dynamic analysis of programs. We survey current state of the art and speculate on promising directions for future research. AU - Gordon, Andrew AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Nori, Aditya AU - Rajamani, Sriram ID - 1393 T2 - Proceedings of the on Future of Software Engineering TI - Probabilistic programming ER - TY - CONF AB - In this paper we present INTERHORN, a solver for recursion-free Horn clauses. The main application domain of INTERHORN lies in solving interpolation problems arising in software verification. We show how a range of interpolation problems, including path, transition, nested, state/transition and well-founded interpolation can be handled directly by INTERHORN. By detailing these interpolation problems and their Horn clause representations, we hope to encourage the emergence of a common back-end interpolation interface useful for diverse verification tools. AU - Gupta, Ashutosh AU - Popeea, Corneliu AU - Rybalchenko, Andrey ID - 1702 T2 - Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science, EPTCS TI - Generalised interpolation by solving recursion free-horn clauses VL - 169 ER - TY - CONF AB - Boolean controllers for systems with complex datapaths are often very difficult to implement correctly, in particular when concurrency is involved. Yet, in many instances it is easy to formally specify correctness. For example, the specification for the controller of a pipelined processor only has to state that the pipelined processor gives the same results as a non-pipelined reference design. This makes such controllers a good target for automated synthesis. However, an efficient abstraction for the complex datapath elements is needed, as a bit-precise description is often infeasible. We present Suraq, the first controller synthesis tool which uses uninterpreted functions for the abstraction. Quantified firstorder formulas (with specific quantifier structure) serve as the specification language from which Suraq synthesizes Boolean controllers. Suraq transforms the specification into an unsatisfiable SMT formula, and uses Craig interpolation to compute its results. Using Suraq, we were able to synthesize a controller (consisting of two Boolean signals) for a five-stage pipelined DLX processor in roughly one hour and 15 minutes. AU - Hofferek, Georg AU - Gupta, Ashutosh ED - Yahav, Eran ID - 1869 T2 - HVC 2014 TI - Suraq - a controller synthesis tool using uninterpreted functions VL - 8855 ER - TY - CONF AB - Extensionality axioms are common when reasoning about data collections, such as arrays and functions in program analysis, or sets in mathematics. An extensionality axiom asserts that two collections are equal if they consist of the same elements at the same indices. Using extensionality is often required to show that two collections are equal. A typical example is the set theory theorem (∀x)(∀y)x∪y = y ∪x. Interestingly, while humans have no problem with proving such set identities using extensionality, they are very hard for superposition theorem provers because of the calculi they use. In this paper we show how addition of a new inference rule, called extensionality resolution, allows first-order theorem provers to easily solve problems no modern first-order theorem prover can solve. We illustrate this by running the VAMPIRE theorem prover with extensionality resolution on a number of set theory and array problems. Extensionality resolution helps VAMPIRE to solve problems from the TPTP library of first-order problems that were never solved before by any prover. AU - Gupta, Ashutosh AU - Kovács, Laura AU - Kragl, Bernhard AU - Voronkov, Andrei ED - Cassez, Franck ED - Raskin, Jean-François ID - 1872 T2 - ATVA 2014 TI - Extensional crisis and proving identity VL - 8837 ER - TY - CONF AB - We investigate the problem of checking if a finite-state transducer is robust to uncertainty in its input. Our notion of robustness is based on the analytic notion of Lipschitz continuity - a transducer is K-(Lipschitz) robust if the perturbation in its output is at most K times the perturbation in its input. We quantify input and output perturbation using similarity functions. We show that K-robustness is undecidable even for deterministic transducers. We identify a class of functional transducers, which admits a polynomial time automata-theoretic decision procedure for K-robustness. This class includes Mealy machines and functional letter-to-letter transducers. We also study K-robustness of nondeterministic transducers. Since a nondeterministic transducer generates a set of output words for each input word, we quantify output perturbation using setsimilarity functions. We show that K-robustness of nondeterministic transducers is undecidable, even for letter-to-letter transducers. We identify a class of set-similarity functions which admit decidable K-robustness of letter-to-letter transducers. AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Otop, Jan AU - Samanta, Roopsha ID - 1870 T2 - Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics, LIPIcs TI - Lipschitz robustness of finite-state transducers VL - 29 ER - TY - CONF AB - We present a formal framework for repairing infinite-state, imperative, sequential programs, with (possibly recursive) procedures and multiple assertions; the framework can generate repaired programs by modifying the original erroneous program in multiple program locations, and can ensure the readability of the repaired program using user-defined expression templates; the framework also generates a set of inductive assertions that serve as a proof of correctness of the repaired program. As a step toward integrating programmer intent and intuition in automated program repair, we present a cost-aware formulation - given a cost function associated with permissible statement modifications, the goal is to ensure that the total program modification cost does not exceed a given repair budget. As part of our predicate abstractionbased solution framework, we present a sound and complete algorithm for repair of Boolean programs. We have developed a prototype tool based on SMT solving and used it successfully to repair diverse errors in benchmark C programs. AU - Samanta, Roopsha AU - Olivo, Oswaldo AU - Allen, Emerson ED - Müller-Olm, Markus ED - Seidl, Helmut ID - 1875 TI - Cost-aware automatic program repair VL - 8723 ER - TY - CONF AB - We present a general framework for applying machine-learning algorithms to the verification of Markov decision processes (MDPs). The primary goal of these techniques is to improve performance by avoiding an exhaustive exploration of the state space. Our framework focuses on probabilistic reachability, which is a core property for verification, and is illustrated through two distinct instantiations. The first assumes that full knowledge of the MDP is available, and performs a heuristic-driven partial exploration of the model, yielding precise lower and upper bounds on the required probability. The second tackles the case where we may only sample the MDP, and yields probabilistic guarantees, again in terms of both the lower and upper bounds, which provides efficient stopping criteria for the approximation. The latter is the first extension of statistical model checking for unbounded properties inMDPs. In contrast with other related techniques, our approach is not restricted to time-bounded (finite-horizon) or discounted properties, nor does it assume any particular properties of the MDP. We also show how our methods extend to LTL objectives. We present experimental results showing the performance of our framework on several examples. AU - Brázdil, Tomáš AU - Chatterjee, Krishnendu AU - Chmelik, Martin AU - Forejt, Vojtěch AU - Kretinsky, Jan AU - Kwiatkowska, Marta AU - Parker, David AU - Ujma, Mateusz ED - Cassez, Franck ED - Raskin, Jean-François ID - 2027 T2 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics) TI - Verification of markov decision processes using learning algorithms VL - 8837 ER - TY - CONF AB - We present a tool for translating LTL formulae into deterministic ω-automata. It is the first tool that covers the whole LTL that does not use Safra’s determinization or any of its variants. This leads to smaller automata. There are several outputs of the tool: firstly, deterministic Rabin automata, which are the standard input for probabilistic model checking, e.g. for the probabilistic model-checker PRISM; secondly, deterministic generalized Rabin automata, which can also be used for probabilistic model checking and are sometimes by orders of magnitude smaller. We also link our tool to PRISM and show that this leads to a significant speed-up of probabilistic LTL model checking, especially with the generalized Rabin automata. AU - Komárková, Zuzana AU - Kretinsky, Jan ED - Cassez, Franck ED - Raskin, Jean-François ID - 2026 T2 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics) TI - Rabinizer 3: Safraless translation of ltl to small deterministic automata VL - 8837 ER - TY - CONF AB - In contrast to the usual understanding of probabilistic systems as stochastic processes, recently these systems have also been regarded as transformers of probabilities. In this paper, we give a natural definition of strong bisimulation for probabilistic systems corresponding to this view that treats probability distributions as first-class citizens. Our definition applies in the same way to discrete systems as well as to systems with uncountable state and action spaces. Several examples demonstrate that our definition refines the understanding of behavioural equivalences of probabilistic systems. In particular, it solves a longstanding open problem concerning the representation of memoryless continuous time by memoryfull continuous time. Finally, we give algorithms for computing this bisimulation not only for finite but also for classes of uncountably infinite systems. AU - Hermanns, Holger AU - Krčál, Jan AU - Kretinsky, Jan ED - Baldan, Paolo ED - Gorla, Daniele ID - 2053 T2 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics) TI - Probabilistic bisimulation: Naturally on distributions VL - 8704 ER - TY - JOUR AB - We consider a continuous-time Markov chain (CTMC) whose state space is partitioned into aggregates, and each aggregate is assigned a probability measure. A sufficient condition for defining a CTMC over the aggregates is presented as a variant of weak lumpability, which also characterizes that the measure over the original process can be recovered from that of the aggregated one. We show how the applicability of de-aggregation depends on the initial distribution. The application section is devoted to illustrate how the developed theory aids in reducing CTMC models of biochemical systems particularly in connection to protein-protein interactions. We assume that the model is written by a biologist in form of site-graph-rewrite rules. Site-graph-rewrite rules compactly express that, often, only a local context of a protein (instead of a full molecular species) needs to be in a certain configuration in order to trigger a reaction event. This observation leads to suitable aggregate Markov chains with smaller state spaces, thereby providing sufficient reduction in computational complexity. This is further exemplified in two case studies: simple unbounded polymerization and early EGFR/insulin crosstalk. AU - Ganguly, Arnab AU - Petrov, Tatjana AU - Koeppl, Heinz ID - 2056 IS - 3 JF - Journal of Mathematical Biology TI - Markov chain aggregation and its applications to combinatorial reaction networks VL - 69 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Systems should not only be correct but also robust in the sense that they behave reasonably in unexpected situations. This article addresses synthesis of robust reactive systems from temporal specifications. Existing methods allow arbitrary behavior if assumptions in the specification are violated. To overcome this, we define two robustness notions, combine them, and show how to enforce them in synthesis. The first notion applies to safety properties: If safety assumptions are violated temporarily, we require that the system recovers to normal operation with as few errors as possible. The second notion requires that, if liveness assumptions are violated, as many guarantees as possible should be fulfilled nevertheless. We present a synthesis procedure achieving this for the important class of GR(1) specifications, and establish complexity bounds. We also present an implementation of a special case of robustness, and show experimental results. AU - Bloem, Roderick AU - Chatterjee, Krishnendu AU - Greimel, Karin AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Hofferek, Georg AU - Jobstmann, Barbara AU - Könighofer, Bettina AU - Könighofer, Robert ID - 2187 IS - 3-4 JF - Acta Informatica TI - Synthesizing robust systems VL - 51 ER - TY - CONF AB - We present a new algorithm to construct a (generalized) deterministic Rabin automaton for an LTL formula φ. The automaton is the product of a master automaton and an array of slave automata, one for each G-subformula of φ. The slave automaton for G ψ is in charge of recognizing whether FG ψ holds. As opposed to standard determinization procedures, the states of all our automata have a clear logical structure, which allows for various optimizations. Our construction subsumes former algorithms for fragments of LTL. Experimental results show improvement in the sizes of the resulting automata compared to existing methods. AU - Esparza, Javier AU - Kretinsky, Jan ID - 2190 TI - From LTL to deterministic automata: A safraless compositional approach VL - 8559 ER - TY - JOUR AB - A discounted-sum automaton (NDA) is a nondeterministic finite automaton with edge weights, valuing a run by the discounted sum of visited edge weights. More precisely, the weight in the i-th position of the run is divided by λi, where the discount factor λ is a fixed rational number greater than 1. The value of a word is the minimal value of the automaton runs on it. Discounted summation is a common and useful measuring scheme, especially for infinite sequences, reflecting the assumption that earlier weights are more important than later weights. Unfortunately, determinization of NDAs, which is often essential in formal verification, is, in general, not possible. We provide positive news, showing that every NDA with an integral discount factor is determinizable. We complete the picture by proving that the integers characterize exactly the discount factors that guarantee determinizability: for every nonintegral rational discount factor λ, there is a nondeterminizable λ-NDA. We also prove that the class of NDAs with integral discount factors enjoys closure under the algebraic operations min, max, addition, and subtraction, which is not the case for general NDAs nor for deterministic NDAs. For general NDAs, we look into approximate determinization, which is always possible as the influence of a word's suffix decays. We show that the naive approach, of unfolding the automaton computations up to a sufficient level, is doubly exponential in the discount factor. We provide an alternative construction for approximate determinization, which is singly exponential in the discount factor, in the precision, and in the number of states. We also prove matching lower bounds, showing that the exponential dependency on each of these three parameters cannot be avoided. All our results hold equally for automata over finite words and for automata over infinite words. AU - Boker, Udi AU - Henzinger, Thomas A ID - 2233 IS - 1 JF - Logical Methods in Computer Science SN - 18605974 TI - Exact and approximate determinization of discounted-sum automata VL - 10 ER - TY - CONF AB - The analysis of the energy consumption of software is an important goal for quantitative formal methods. Current methods, using weighted transition systems or energy games, model the energy source as an ideal resource whose status is characterized by one number, namely the amount of remaining energy. Real batteries, however, exhibit behaviors that can deviate substantially from an ideal energy resource. Based on a discretization of a standard continuous battery model, we introduce battery transition systems. In this model, a battery is viewed as consisting of two parts-the available-charge tank and the bound-charge tank. Any charge or discharge is applied to the available-charge tank. Over time, the energy from each tank diffuses to the other tank. Battery transition systems are infinite state systems that, being not well-structured, fall into no decidable class that is known to us. Nonetheless, we are able to prove that the !-regular modelchecking problem is decidable for battery transition systems. We also present a case study on the verification of control programs for energy-constrained semi-autonomous robots. AU - Boker, Udi AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Radhakrishna, Arjun ID - 2239 IS - 1 SN - 978-145032544-8 TI - Battery transition systems VL - 49 ER - TY - JOUR AB - The classical (boolean) notion of refinement for behavioral interfaces of system components is the alternating refinement preorder. In this paper, we define a distance for interfaces, called interface simulation distance. It makes the alternating refinement preorder quantitative by, intuitively, tolerating errors (while counting them) in the alternating simulation game. We show that the interface simulation distance satisfies the triangle inequality, that the distance between two interfaces does not increase under parallel composition with a third interface, that the distance between two interfaces can be bounded from above and below by distances between abstractions of the two interfaces, and how to synthesize an interface from incompatible requirements. We illustrate the framework, and the properties of the distances under composition of interfaces, with two case studies. AU - Cerny, Pavol AU - Chmelik, Martin AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Radhakrishna, Arjun ID - 1733 IS - 3 JF - Theoretical Computer Science TI - Interface simulation distances VL - 560 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Recently, there has been an effort to add quantitative objectives to formal verification and synthesis. We introduce and investigate the extension of temporal logics with quantitative atomic assertions. At the heart of quantitative objectives lies the accumulation of values along a computation. It is often the accumulated sum, as with energy objectives, or the accumulated average, as with mean-payoff objectives. We investigate the extension of temporal logics with the prefix-accumulation assertions Sum(v) ≥ c and Avg(v) ≥ c, where v is a numeric (or Boolean) variable of the system, c is a constant rational number, and Sum(v) and Avg(v) denote the accumulated sum and average of the values of v from the beginning of the computation up to the current point in time. We also allow the path-accumulation assertions LimInfAvg(v) ≥ c and LimSupAvg(v) ≥ c, referring to the average value along an entire infinite computation. We study the border of decidability for such quantitative extensions of various temporal logics. In particular, we show that extending the fragment of CTL that has only the EX, EF, AX, and AG temporal modalities with both prefix-accumulation assertions, or extending LTL with both path-accumulation assertions, results in temporal logics whose model-checking problem is decidable. Moreover, the prefix-accumulation assertions may be generalized with "controlled accumulation," allowing, for example, to specify constraints on the average waiting time between a request and a grant. On the negative side, we show that this branching-time logic is, in a sense, the maximal logic with one or both of the prefix-accumulation assertions that permits a decidable model-checking procedure. Extending a temporal logic that has the EG or EU modalities, such as CTL or LTL, makes the problem undecidable. AU - Boker, Udi AU - Chatterjee, Krishnendu AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Kupferman, Orna ID - 2038 IS - 4 JF - ACM Transactions on Computational Logic (TOCL) TI - Temporal specifications with accumulative values VL - 15 ER - TY - GEN AB - Model-based testing is a promising technology for black-box software and hardware testing, in which test cases are generated automatically from high-level specifications. Nowadays, systems typically consist of multiple interacting components and, due to their complexity, testing presents a considerable portion of the effort and cost in the design process. Exploiting the compositional structure of system specifications can considerably reduce the effort in model-based testing. Moreover, inferring properties about the system from testing its individual components allows the designer to reduce the amount of integration testing. In this paper, we study compositional properties of the IOCO-testing theory. We propose a new approach to composition and hiding operations, inspired by contract-based design and interface theories. These operations preserve behaviors that are compatible under composition and hiding, and prune away incompatible ones. The resulting specification characterizes the input sequences for which the unit testing of components is sufficient to infer the correctness of component integration without the need for further tests. We provide a methodology that uses these results to minimize integration testing effort, but also to detect potential weaknesses in specifications. While we focus on asynchronous models and the IOCO conformance relation, the resulting methodology can be applied to a broader class of systems. AU - Daca, Przemyslaw AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Krenn, Willibald AU - Nickovic, Dejan ID - 5411 SN - 2664-1690 TI - Compositional specifications for IOCO testing ER - TY - CONF AB - As hybrid systems involve continuous behaviors, they should be evaluated by quantitative methods, rather than qualitative methods. In this paper we adapt a quantitative framework, called model measuring, to the hybrid systems domain. The model-measuring problem asks, given a model M and a specification, what is the maximal distance such that all models within that distance from M satisfy (or violate) the specification. A distance function on models is given as part of the input of the problem. Distances, especially related to continuous behaviors are more natural in the hybrid case than the discrete case. We are interested in distances represented by monotonic hybrid automata, a hybrid counterpart of (discrete) weighted automata, whose recognized timed languages are monotone (w.r.t. inclusion) in the values of parameters. The contributions of this paper are twofold. First, we give sufficient conditions under which the model-measuring problem can be solved. Second, we discuss the modeling of distances and applications of the model-measuring problem. AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Otop, Jan ID - 2217 T2 - Proceedings of the 17th international conference on Hybrid systems: computation and control TI - Model measuring for hybrid systems ER - TY - GEN AB - We define the model-measuring problem: given a model M and specification φ, what is the maximal distance ρ such that all models M'within distance ρ from M satisfy (or violate)φ. The model measuring problem presupposes a distance function on models. We concentrate on automatic distance functions, which are defined by weighted automata. The model-measuring problem subsumes several generalizations of the classical model-checking problem, in particular, quantitative model-checking problems that measure the degree of satisfaction of a specification, and robustness problems that measure how much a model can be perturbed without violating the specification. We show that for automatic distance functions, and ω-regular linear-time and branching-time specifications, the model-measuring problem can be solved. We use automata-theoretic model-checking methods for model measuring, replacing the emptiness question for standard word and tree automata by the optimal-weight question for the weighted versions of these automata. We consider weighted automata that accumulate weights by maximizing, summing, discounting, and limit averaging. We give several examples of using the model-measuring problem to compute various notions of robustness and quantitative satisfaction for temporal specifications. AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Otop, Jan ID - 5417 SN - 2664-1690 TI - From model checking to model measuring ER - TY - GEN AB - As hybrid systems involve continuous behaviors, they should be evaluated by quantitative methods, rather than qualitative methods. In this paper we adapt a quantitative framework, called model measuring, to the hybrid systems domain. The model-measuring problem asks, given a model M and a specification, what is the maximal distance such that all models within that distance from M satisfy (or violate) the specification. A distance function on models is given as part of the input of the problem. Distances, especially related to continuous behaviors are more natural in the hybrid case than the discrete case. We are interested in distances represented by monotonic hybrid automata, a hybrid counterpart of (discrete) weighted automata, whose recognized timed languages are monotone (w.r.t. inclusion) in the values of parameters.The contributions of this paper are twofold. First, we give sufficient conditions under which the model-measuring problem can be solved. Second, we discuss the modeling of distances and applications of the model-measuring problem. AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Otop, Jan ID - 5416 SN - 2664-1690 TI - Model measuring for hybrid systems ER - TY - GEN AB - Recently there has been a significant effort to add quantitative properties in formal verification and synthesis. While weighted automata over finite and infinite words provide a natural and flexible framework to express quantitative properties, perhaps surprisingly, several basic system properties such as average response time cannot be expressed with weighted automata. In this work, we introduce nested weighted automata as a new formalism for expressing important quantitative properties such as average response time. We establish an almost complete decidability picture for the basic decision problems for nested weighted automata, and illustrate its applicability in several domains. AU - Chatterjee, Krishnendu AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Otop, Jan ID - 5415 SN - 2664-1690 TI - Nested weighted automata ER - TY - CONF AB - While fixing concurrency bugs, program repair algorithms may introduce new concurrency bugs. We present an algorithm that avoids such regressions. The solution space is given by a set of program transformations we consider in the repair process. These include reordering of instructions within a thread and inserting atomic sections. The new algorithm learns a constraint on the space of candidate solutions, from both positive examples (error-free traces) and counterexamples (error traces). From each counterexample, the algorithm learns a constraint necessary to remove the errors. From each positive examples, it learns a constraint that is necessary in order to prevent the repair from turning the trace into an error trace. We implemented the algorithm and evaluated it on simplified Linux device drivers with known bugs. AU - Cerny, Pavol AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Radhakrishna, Arjun AU - Ryzhyk, Leonid AU - Tarrach, Thorsten ID - 2218 SN - 978-331908866-2 TI - Regression-free synthesis for concurrency VL - 8559 ER - TY - CONF AB - Model-based testing is a promising technology for black-box software and hardware testing, in which test cases are generated automatically from high-level specifications. Nowadays, systems typically consist of multiple interacting components and, due to their complexity, testing presents a considerable portion of the effort and cost in the design process. Exploiting the compositional structure of system specifications can considerably reduce the effort in model-based testing. Moreover, inferring properties about the system from testing its individual components allows the designer to reduce the amount of integration testing. In this paper, we study compositional properties of the ioco-testing theory. We propose a new approach to composition and hiding operations, inspired by contract-based design and interface theories. These operations preserve behaviors that are compatible under composition and hiding, and prune away incompatible ones. The resulting specification characterizes the input sequences for which the unit testing of components is sufficient to infer the correctness of component integration without the need for further tests. We provide a methodology that uses these results to minimize integration testing effort, but also to detect potential weaknesses in specifications. While we focus on asynchronous models and the ioco conformance relation, the resulting methodology can be applied to a broader class of systems. AU - Daca, Przemyslaw AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Krenn, Willibald AU - Nickovic, Dejan ID - 2167 SN - 2159-4848 T2 - IEEE 7th International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation TI - Compositional specifications for IOCO testing ER - TY - CONF AB - We consider Markov decision processes (MDPs) which are a standard model for probabilistic systems.We focus on qualitative properties forMDPs that can express that desired behaviors of the system arise almost-surely (with probability 1) or with positive probability. We introduce a new simulation relation to capture the refinement relation ofMDPs with respect to qualitative properties, and present discrete graph theoretic algorithms with quadratic complexity to compute the simulation relation.We present an automated technique for assume-guarantee style reasoning for compositional analysis ofMDPs with qualitative properties by giving a counterexample guided abstraction-refinement approach to compute our new simulation relation. We have implemented our algorithms and show that the compositional analysis leads to significant improvements. AU - Chatterjee, Krishnendu AU - Chmelik, Martin AU - Daca, Przemyslaw ID - 2063 TI - CEGAR for qualitative analysis of probabilistic systems VL - 8559 ER - TY - GEN AB - Simulation is an attractive alternative for language inclusion for automata as it is an under-approximation of language inclusion, but usually has much lower complexity. For non-deterministic automata, while language inclusion is PSPACE-complete, simulation can be computed in polynomial time. Simulation has also been extended in two orthogonal directions, namely, (1) fair simulation, for simulation over specified set of infinite runs; and (2) quantitative simulation, for simulation between weighted automata. Again, while fair trace inclusion is PSPACE-complete, fair simulation can be computed in polynomial time. For weighted automata, the (quantitative) language inclusion problem is undecidable for mean-payoff automata and the decidability is open for discounted-sum automata, whereas the (quantitative) simulation reduce to mean-payoff games and discounted-sum games, which admit pseudo-polynomial time algorithms. In this work, we study (quantitative) simulation for weighted automata with Büchi acceptance conditions, i.e., we generalize fair simulation from non-weighted automata to weighted automata. We show that imposing Büchi acceptance conditions on weighted automata changes many fundamental properties of the simulation games. For example, whereas for mean-payoff and discounted-sum games, the players do not need memory to play optimally; we show in contrast that for simulation games with Büchi acceptance conditions, (i) for mean-payoff objectives, optimal strategies for both players require infinite memory in general, and (ii) for discounted-sum objectives, optimal strategies need not exist for both players. While the simulation games with Büchi acceptance conditions are more complicated (e.g., due to infinite-memory requirements for mean-payoff objectives) as compared to their counterpart without Büchi acceptance conditions, we still present pseudo-polynomial time algorithms to solve simulation games with Büchi acceptance conditions for both weighted mean-payoff and weighted discounted-sum automata. AU - Chatterjee, Krishnendu AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Otop, Jan AU - Velner, Yaron ID - 5428 SN - 2664-1690 TI - Quantitative fair simulation games ER - TY - CONF AB - A prominent remedy to multicore scalability issues in concurrent data structure implementations is to relax the sequential specification of the data structure. We present distributed queues (DQ), a new family of relaxed concurrent queue implementations. DQs implement relaxed queues with linearizable emptiness check and either configurable or bounded out-of-order behavior or pool behavior. Our experiments show that DQs outperform and outscale in micro- and macrobenchmarks all strict and relaxed queue as well as pool implementations that we considered. AU - Haas, Andreas AU - Lippautz, Michael AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Payer, Hannes AU - Sokolova, Ana AU - Kirsch, Christoph M. AU - Sezgin, Ali ID - 10898 IS - 5 SN - 978-145032053-5 T2 - Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers - CF '13 TI - Distributed queues in shared memory: Multicore performance and scalability through quantitative relaxation ER - TY - CONF AB - It is often difficult to correctly implement a Boolean controller for a complex system, especially when concurrency is involved. Yet, it may be easy to formally specify a controller. For instance, for a pipelined processor it suffices to state that the visible behavior of the pipelined system should be identical to a non-pipelined reference system (Burch-Dill paradigm). We present a novel procedure to efficiently synthesize multiple Boolean control signals from a specification given as a quantified first-order formula (with a specific quantifier structure). Our approach uses uninterpreted functions to abstract details of the design. We construct an unsatisfiable SMT formula from the given specification. Then, from just one proof of unsatisfiability, we use a variant of Craig interpolation to compute multiple coordinated interpolants that implement the Boolean control signals. Our method avoids iterative learning and back-substitution of the control functions. We applied our approach to synthesize a controller for a simple two-stage pipelined processor, and present first experimental results. AU - Hofferek, Georg AU - Gupta, Ashutosh AU - Könighofer, Bettina AU - Jiang, Jie AU - Bloem, Roderick ID - 1385 T2 - 2013 Formal Methods in Computer-Aided Design TI - Synthesizing multiple boolean functions using interpolation on a single proof ER - TY - CONF AB - Choices made by nondeterministic word automata depend on both the past (the prefix of the word read so far) and the future (the suffix yet to be read). In several applications, most notably synthesis, the future is diverse or unknown, leading to algorithms that are based on deterministic automata. Hoping to retain some of the advantages of nondeterministic automata, researchers have studied restricted classes of nondeterministic automata. Three such classes are nondeterministic automata that are good for trees (GFT; i.e., ones that can be expanded to tree automata accepting the derived tree languages, thus whose choices should satisfy diverse futures), good for games (GFG; i.e., ones whose choices depend only on the past), and determinizable by pruning (DBP; i.e., ones that embody equivalent deterministic automata). The theoretical properties and relative merits of the different classes are still open, having vagueness on whether they really differ from deterministic automata. In particular, while DBP ⊆ GFG ⊆ GFT, it is not known whether every GFT automaton is GFG and whether every GFG automaton is DBP. Also open is the possible succinctness of GFG and GFT automata compared to deterministic automata. We study these problems for ω-regular automata with all common acceptance conditions. We show that GFT=GFG⊃DBP, and describe a determinization construction for GFG automata. AU - Boker, Udi AU - Kuperberg, Denis AU - Kupferman, Orna AU - Skrzypczak, Michał ID - 1387 IS - PART 2 TI - Nondeterminism in the presence of a diverse or unknown future VL - 7966 ER - TY - CONF AB - There is a trade-off between performance and correctness in implementing concurrent data structures. Better performance may be achieved at the expense of relaxing correctness, by redefining the semantics of data structures. We address such a redefinition of data structure semantics and present a systematic and formal framework for obtaining new data structures by quantitatively relaxing existing ones. We view a data structure as a sequential specification S containing all "legal" sequences over an alphabet of method calls. Relaxing the data structure corresponds to defining a distance from any sequence over the alphabet to the sequential specification: the k-relaxed sequential specification contains all sequences over the alphabet within distance k from the original specification. In contrast to other existing work, our relaxations are semantic (distance in terms of data structure states). As an instantiation of our framework, we present two simple yet generic relaxation schemes, called out-of-order and stuttering relaxation, along with several ways of computing distances. We show that the out-of-order relaxation, when further instantiated to stacks, queues, and priority queues, amounts to tolerating bounded out-of-order behavior, which cannot be captured by a purely syntactic relaxation (distance in terms of sequence manipulation, e.g. edit distance). We give concurrent implementations of relaxed data structures and demonstrate that bounded relaxations provide the means for trading correctness for performance in a controlled way. The relaxations are monotonic which further highlights the trade-off: increasing k increases the number of permitted sequences, which as we demonstrate can lead to better performance. Finally, since a relaxed stack or queue also implements a pool, we actually have new concurrent pool implementations that outperform the state-of-the-art ones. AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Kirsch, Christoph AU - Payer, Hannes AU - Sezgin, Ali AU - Sokolova, Ana ID - 2181 SN - 978-1-4503-1832-7 T2 - Proceedings of the 40th annual ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming language TI - Quantitative relaxation of concurrent data structures ER - TY - CONF AB - We propose a general framework for abstraction with respect to quantitative properties, such as worst-case execution time, or power consumption. Our framework provides a systematic way for counter-example guided abstraction refinement for quantitative properties. The salient aspect of the framework is that it allows anytime verification, that is, verification algorithms that can be stopped at any time (for example, due to exhaustion of memory), and report approximations that improve monotonically when the algorithms are given more time. We instantiate the framework with a number of quantitative abstractions and refinement schemes, which differ in terms of how much quantitative information they keep from the original system. We introduce both state-based and trace-based quantitative abstractions, and we describe conditions that define classes of quantitative properties for which the abstractions provide over-approximations. We give algorithms for evaluating the quantitative properties on the abstract systems. We present algorithms for counter-example based refinements for quantitative properties for both state-based and segment-based abstractions. We perform a case study on worst-case execution time of executables to evaluate the anytime verification aspect and the quantitative abstractions we proposed. AU - Cerny, Pavol AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Radhakrishna, Arjun ID - 2182 T2 - Proceedings of the 40th annual ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming language TI - Quantitative abstraction refinement ER - TY - CONF AB - We describe new extensions of the Vampire theorem prover for computing tree interpolants. These extensions generalize Craig interpolation in Vampire, and can also be used to derive sequence interpolants. We evaluated our implementation on a large number of examples over the theory of linear integer arithmetic and integer-indexed arrays, with and without quantifiers. When compared to other methods, our experiments show that some examples could only be solved by our implementation. AU - Blanc, Régis AU - Gupta, Ashutosh AU - Kovács, Laura AU - Kragl, Bernhard ID - 2237 TI - Tree interpolation in Vampire VL - 8312 ER - TY - CONF AB - We show that modal logic over universally first-order definable classes of transitive frames is decidable. More precisely, let K be an arbitrary class of transitive Kripke frames definable by a universal first-order sentence. We show that the global and finite global satisfiability problems of modal logic over K are decidable in NP, regardless of choice of K. We also show that the local satisfiability and the finite local satisfiability problems of modal logic over K are decidable in NEXPTIME. AU - Michaliszyn, Jakub AU - Otop, Jan ID - 2243 TI - Elementary modal logics over transitive structures VL - 23 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Formal verification aims to improve the quality of software by detecting errors before they do harm. At the basis of formal verification is the logical notion of correctness, which purports to capture whether or not a program behaves as desired. We suggest that the boolean partition of software into correct and incorrect programs falls short of the practical need to assess the behavior of software in a more nuanced fashion against multiple criteria. We therefore propose to introduce quantitative fitness measures for programs, specifically for measuring the function, performance, and robustness of reactive programs such as concurrent processes. This article describes the goals of the ERC Advanced Investigator Project QUAREM. The project aims to build and evaluate a theory of quantitative fitness measures for reactive models. Such a theory must strive to obtain quantitative generalizations of the paradigms that have been success stories in qualitative reactive modeling, such as compositionality, property-preserving abstraction and abstraction refinement, model checking, and synthesis. The theory will be evaluated not only in the context of software and hardware engineering, but also in the context of systems biology. In particular, we will use the quantitative reactive models and fitness measures developed in this project for testing hypotheses about the mechanisms behind data from biological experiments. AU - Henzinger, Thomas A ID - 2289 IS - 4 JF - Computer Science Research and Development TI - Quantitative reactive modeling and verification VL - 28 ER - TY - GEN AB - This book constitutes the proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Computational Methods in Systems Biology, CMSB 2013, held in Klosterneuburg, Austria, in September 2013. The 15 regular papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 27 submissions. They deal with computational models for all levels, from molecular and cellular, to organs and entire organisms. ED - Gupta, Ashutosh ED - Henzinger, Thomas A ID - 2288 SN - 978-3-642-40707-9 TI - Computational Methods in Systems Biology VL - 8130 ER - TY - CONF AB - We present a shape analysis for programs that manipulate overlaid data structures which share sets of objects. The abstract domain contains Separation Logic formulas that (1) combine a per-object separating conjunction with a per-field separating conjunction and (2) constrain a set of variables interpreted as sets of objects. The definition of the abstract domain operators is based on a notion of homomorphism between formulas, viewed as graphs, used recently to define optimal decision procedures for fragments of the Separation Logic. Based on a Frame Rule that supports the two versions of the separating conjunction, the analysis is able to reason in a modular manner about non-overlaid data structures and then, compose information only at a few program points, e.g., procedure returns. We have implemented this analysis in a prototype tool and applied it on several interesting case studies that manipulate overlaid and nested linked lists. AU - Dragoi, Cezara AU - Enea, Constantin AU - Sighireanu, Mihaela ID - 2298 TI - Local shape analysis for overlaid data structures VL - 7935 ER - TY - JOUR AB - The standard hardware design flow involves: (a) design of an integrated circuit using a hardware description language, (b) extensive functional and formal verification, and (c) logical synthesis. However, the above-mentioned processes consume significant effort and time. An alternative approach is to use a formal specification language as a high-level hardware description language and synthesize hardware from formal specifications. Our work is a case study of the synthesis of the widely and industrially used AMBA AHB protocol from formal specifications. Bloem et al. presented the first formal specifications for the AMBA AHB Arbiter and synthesized the AHB Arbiter circuit. However, in the first formal specification some important assumptions were missing. Our contributions are as follows: (a) We present detailed formal specifications for the AHB Arbiter incorporating the missing details, and obtain significant improvements in the synthesis results (both with respect to the number of gates in the synthesized circuit and with respect to the time taken to synthesize the circuit), and (b) we present formal specifications to generate compact circuits for the remaining two main components of AMBA AHB, namely, AHB Master and AHB Slave. Thus with systematic description we are able to automatically and completely synthesize an important and widely used industrial protocol. AU - Godhal, Yashdeep AU - Chatterjee, Krishnendu AU - Henzinger, Thomas A ID - 2299 IS - 5-6 JF - International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer TI - Synthesis of AMBA AHB from formal specification: A case study VL - 15 ER - TY - CONF AB - We describe the design and implementation of P, a domain-specific language to write asynchronous event driven code. P allows the programmer to specify the system as a collection of interacting state machines, which communicate with each other using events. P unifies modeling and programming into one activity for the programmer. Not only can a P program be compiled into executable code, but it can also be tested using model checking techniques. P allows the programmer to specify the environment, used to "close" the system during testing, as nondeterministic ghost machines. Ghost machines are erased during compilation to executable code; a type system ensures that the erasure is semantics preserving. The P language is designed so that a P program can be checked for responsiveness-the ability to handle every event in a timely manner. By default, a machine needs to handle every event that arrives in every state. But handling every event in every state is impractical. The language provides a notion of deferred events where the programmer can annotate when she wants to delay processing an event. The default safety checker looks for presence of unhan-dled events. The language also provides default liveness checks that an event cannot be potentially deferred forever. P was used to implement and verify the core of the USB device driver stack that ships with Microsoft Windows 8. The resulting driver is more reliable and performs better than its prior incarnation (which did not use P); we have more confidence in the robustness of its design due to the language abstractions and verification provided by P. AU - Desai, Ankush AU - Gupta, Vivek AU - Jackson, Ethan AU - Qadeer, Shaz AU - Rajamani, Sriram AU - Zufferey, Damien ID - 2301 T2 - Proceedings of the 34th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation TI - P: Safe asynchronous event-driven programming ER - TY - CONF AB - Linearizability of concurrent data structures is usually proved by monolithic simulation arguments relying on identifying the so-called linearization points. Regrettably, such proofs, whether manual or automatic, are often complicated and scale poorly to advanced non-blocking concurrency patterns, such as helping and optimistic updates. In response, we propose a more modular way of checking linearizability of concurrent queue algorithms that does not involve identifying linearization points. We reduce the task of proving linearizability with respect to the queue specification to establishing four basic properties, each of which can be proved independently by simpler arguments. As a demonstration of our approach, we verify the Herlihy and Wing queue, an algorithm that is challenging to verify by a simulation proof. AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Sezgin, Ali AU - Vafeiadis, Viktor ID - 2328 TI - Aspect-oriented linearizability proofs VL - 8052 ER - TY - CONF AB - Separation logic (SL) has gained widespread popularity because of its ability to succinctly express complex invariants of a program’s heap configurations. Several specialized provers have been developed for decidable SL fragments. However, these provers cannot be easily extended or combined with solvers for other theories that are important in program verification, e.g., linear arithmetic. In this paper, we present a reduction of decidable SL fragments to a decidable first-order theory that fits well into the satisfiability modulo theories (SMT) framework. We show how to use this reduction to automate satisfiability, entailment, frame inference, and abduction problems for separation logic using SMT solvers. Our approach provides a simple method of integrating separation logic into existing verification tools that provide SMT backends, and an elegant way of combining SL fragments with other decidable first-order theories. We implemented this approach in a verification tool and applied it to heap-manipulating programs whose verification involves reasoning in theory combinations. AU - Piskac, Ruzica AU - Wies, Thomas AU - Zufferey, Damien ID - 2447 TI - Automating separation logic using SMT VL - 8044 ER - TY - CONF AB - Traditional formal methods are based on a Boolean satisfaction notion: a reactive system satisfies, or not, a given specification. We generalize formal methods to also address the quality of systems. As an adequate specification formalism we introduce the linear temporal logic LTL[F]. The satisfaction value of an LTL[F] formula is a number between 0 and 1, describing the quality of the satisfaction. The logic generalizes traditional LTL by augmenting it with a (parameterized) set F of arbitrary functions over the interval [0,1]. For example, F may contain the maximum or minimum between the satisfaction values of subformulas, their product, and their average. The classical decision problems in formal methods, such as satisfiability, model checking, and synthesis, are generalized to search and optimization problems in the quantitative setting. For example, model checking asks for the quality in which a specification is satisfied, and synthesis returns a system satisfying the specification with the highest quality. Reasoning about quality gives rise to other natural questions, like the distance between specifications. We formalize these basic questions and study them for LTL[F]. By extending the automata-theoretic approach for LTL to a setting that takes quality into an account, we are able to solve the above problems and show that reasoning about LTL[F] has roughly the same complexity as reasoning about traditional LTL. AU - Almagor, Shaull AU - Boker, Udi AU - Kupferman, Orna ID - 2517 IS - Part 2 TI - Formalizing and reasoning about quality VL - 7966 ER - TY - JOUR AB - We consider concurrent games played on graphs. At every round of a game, each player simultaneously and independently selects a move; the moves jointly determine the transition to a successor state. Two basic objectives are the safety objective to stay forever in a given set of states, and its dual, the reachability objective to reach a given set of states. First, we present a simple proof of the fact that in concurrent reachability games, for all ε>0, memoryless ε-optimal strategies exist. A memoryless strategy is independent of the history of plays, and an ε-optimal strategy achieves the objective with probability within ε of the value of the game. In contrast to previous proofs of this fact, our proof is more elementary and more combinatorial. Second, we present a strategy-improvement (a.k.a. policy-iteration) algorithm for concurrent games with reachability objectives. Finally, we present a strategy-improvement algorithm for turn-based stochastic games (where each player selects moves in turns) with safety objectives. Our algorithms yield sequences of player-1 strategies which ensure probabilities of winning that converge monotonically (from below) to the value of the game. © 2012 Elsevier Inc. AU - Chatterjee, Krishnendu AU - De Alfaro, Luca AU - Henzinger, Thomas A ID - 2854 IS - 5 JF - Journal of Computer and System Sciences TI - Strategy improvement for concurrent reachability and turn based stochastic safety games VL - 79 ER - TY - GEN AB - This volume contains the post-proceedings of the 8th Doctoral Workshop on Mathematical and Engineering Methods in Computer Science, MEMICS 2012, held in Znojmo, Czech Republic, in October, 2012. The 13 thoroughly revised papers were carefully selected out of 31 submissions and are presented together with 6 invited papers. The topics covered by the papers include: computer-aided analysis and verification, applications of game theory in computer science, networks and security, modern trends of graph theory in computer science, electronic systems design and testing, and quantum information processing. ED - Kucera, Antonin ED - Henzinger, Thomas A ED - Nesetril, Jaroslav ED - Vojnar, Tomas ED - Antos, David ID - 2885 TI - Mathematical and Engineering Methods in Computer Science VL - 7721 ER - TY - GEN AB - Linearizability requires that the outcome of calls by competing threads to a concurrent data structure is the same as some sequential execution where each thread has exclusive access to the data structure. In an ordered data structure, such as a queue or a stack, linearizability is ensured by requiring threads commit in the order dictated by the sequential semantics of the data structure; e.g., in a concurrent queue implementation a dequeue can only remove the oldest element. In this paper, we investigate the impact of this strict ordering, by comparing what linearizability allows to what existing implementations do. We first give an operational definition for linearizability which allows us to build the most general linearizable implementation as a transition system for any given sequential specification. We then use this operational definition to categorize linearizable implementations based on whether they are bound or free. In a bound implementation, whenever all threads observe the same logical state, the updates to the logical state and the temporal order of commits coincide. All existing queue implementations we know of are bound. We then proceed to present, to the best of our knowledge, the first ever free queue implementation. Our experiments show that free implementations have the potential for better performance by suffering less from contention. AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Sezgin, Ali ID - 5402 SN - 2664-1690 TI - How free is your linearizable concurrent data structure? ER - TY - CONF AB - We consider the distributed synthesis problem for temporal logic specifications. Traditionally, the problem has been studied for LTL, and the previous results show that the problem is decidable iff there is no information fork in the architecture. We consider the problem for fragments of LTL and our main results are as follows: (1) We show that the problem is undecidable for architectures with information forks even for the fragment of LTL with temporal operators restricted to next and eventually. (2) For specifications restricted to globally along with non-nested next operators, we establish decidability (in EXPSPACE) for star architectures where the processes receive disjoint inputs, whereas we establish undecidability for architectures containing an information fork-meet structure. (3) Finally, we consider LTL without the next operator, and establish decidability (NEXPTIME-complete) for all architectures for a fragment that consists of a set of safety assumptions, and a set of guarantees where each guarantee is a safety, reachability, or liveness condition. AU - Chatterjee, Krishnendu AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Otop, Jan AU - Pavlogiannis, Andreas ID - 1376 T2 - 13th International Conference on Formal Methods in Computer-Aided Design TI - Distributed synthesis for LTL fragments ER - TY - GEN AB - We consider the distributed synthesis problem fortemporal logic specifications. Traditionally, the problem has been studied for LTL, and the previous results show that the problem is decidable iff there is no information fork in the architecture. We consider the problem for fragments of LTLand our main results are as follows: (1) We show that the problem is undecidable for architectures with information forks even for the fragment of LTL with temporal operators restricted to next and eventually. (2) For specifications restricted to globally along with non-nested next operators, we establish decidability (in EXPSPACE) for star architectures where the processes receive disjoint inputs, whereas we establish undecidability for architectures containing an information fork-meet structure. (3)Finally, we consider LTL without the next operator, and establish decidability (NEXPTIME-complete) for all architectures for a fragment that consists of a set of safety assumptions, and a set of guarantees where each guarantee is a safety, reachability, or liveness condition. AU - Chatterjee, Krishnendu AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Otop, Jan AU - Pavlogiannis, Andreas ID - 5406 SN - 2664-1690 TI - Distributed synthesis for LTL Fragments ER - TY - CONF AB - We define the model-measuring problem: given a model M and specification φ, what is the maximal distance ρ such that all models M′ within distance ρ from M satisfy (or violate) φ. The model measuring problem presupposes a distance function on models. We concentrate on automatic distance functions, which are defined by weighted automata. The model-measuring problem subsumes several generalizations of the classical model-checking problem, in particular, quantitative model-checking problems that measure the degree of satisfaction of a specification, and robustness problems that measure how much a model can be perturbed without violating the specification. We show that for automatic distance functions, and ω-regular linear-time and branching-time specifications, the model-measuring problem can be solved. We use automata-theoretic model-checking methods for model measuring, replacing the emptiness question for standard word and tree automata by the optimal-weight question for the weighted versions of these automata. We consider weighted automata that accumulate weights by maximizing, summing, discounting, and limit averaging. We give several examples of using the model-measuring problem to compute various notions of robustness and quantitative satisfaction for temporal specifications. AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Otop, Jan ID - 2327 TI - From model checking to model measuring VL - 8052 ER - TY - GEN AB - In order to guarantee that each method of a data structure updates the logical state exactly once, al-most all non-blocking implementations employ Compare-And-Swap (CAS) based synchronization. For FIFO queue implementations this translates into concurrent enqueue or dequeue methods competing among themselves to update the same variable, the tail or the head, respectively, leading to high contention and poor scalability. Recent non-blocking queue implementations try to alleviate high contentionby increasing the number of contention points, all the while using CAS-based synchronization. Furthermore, obtaining a wait-free implementation with competition is achieved by additional synchronization which leads to further degradation of performance.In this paper we formalize the notion of competitiveness of a synchronizing statement which can beused as a measure for the scalability of concurrent implementations. We present a new queue implementation, the Speculative Pairing (SP) queue, which, as we show, decreases competitiveness by using Fetch-And-Increment (FAI) instead of CAS. We prove that the SP queue is linearizable and lock-free.We also show that replacing CAS with FAI leads to wait-freedom for dequeue methods without an adverse effect on performance. In fact, our experiments suggest that the SP queue can perform and scale better than the state-of-the-art queue implementations. AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Payer, Hannes AU - Sezgin, Ali ID - 6440 SN - 2664-1690 TI - Replacing competition with cooperation to achieve scalable lock-free FIFO queues ER - TY - CHAP AU - Dragoi, Cezara AU - Gupta, Ashutosh AU - Henzinger, Thomas A ID - 5747 SN - 0302-9743 T2 - Computer Aided Verification TI - Automatic Linearizability Proofs of Concurrent Objects with Cooperating Updates VL - 8044 ER - TY - THES AB - Motivated by the analysis of highly dynamic message-passing systems, i.e. unbounded thread creation, mobility, etc. we present a framework for the analysis of depth-bounded systems. Depth-bounded systems are one of the most expressive known fragment of the π-calculus for which interesting verification problems are still decidable. Even though they are infinite state systems depth-bounded systems are well-structured, thus can be analyzed algorithmically. We give an interpretation of depth-bounded systems as graph-rewriting systems. This gives more flexibility and ease of use to apply depth-bounded systems to other type of systems like shared memory concurrency. First, we develop an adequate domain of limits for depth-bounded systems, a prerequisite for the effective representation of downward-closed sets. Downward-closed sets are needed by forward saturation-based algorithms to represent potentially infinite sets of states. Then, we present an abstract interpretation framework to compute the covering set of well-structured transition systems. Because, in general, the covering set is not computable, our abstraction over-approximates the actual covering set. Our abstraction captures the essence of acceleration based-algorithms while giving up enough precision to ensure convergence. We have implemented the analysis in the PICASSO tool and show that it is accurate in practice. Finally, we build some further analyses like termination using the covering set as starting point. AU - Zufferey, Damien ID - 1405 SN - 2663-337X TI - Analysis of dynamic message passing programs ER - TY - CONF AB - Depth-Bounded Systems form an expressive class of well-structured transition systems. They can model a wide range of concurrent infinite-state systems including those with dynamic thread creation, dynamically changing communication topology, and complex shared heap structures. We present the first method to automatically prove fair termination of depth-bounded systems. Our method uses a numerical abstraction of the system, which we obtain by systematically augmenting an over-approximation of the system’s reachable states with a finite set of counters. This numerical abstraction can be analyzed with existing termination provers. What makes our approach unique is the way in which it exploits the well-structuredness of the analyzed system. We have implemented our work in a prototype tool and used it to automatically prove liveness properties of complex concurrent systems, including nonblocking algorithms such as Treiber’s stack and several distributed processes. Many of these examples are beyond the scope of termination analyses that are based on traditional counter abstractions. AU - Bansal, Kshitij AU - Koskinen, Eric AU - Wies, Thomas AU - Zufferey, Damien ED - Piterman, Nir ED - Smolka, Scott ID - 2847 TI - Structural Counter Abstraction VL - 7795 ER - TY - CONF AB - We develop program synthesis techniques that can help programmers fix concurrency-related bugs. We make two new contributions to synthesis for concurrency, the first improving the efficiency of the synthesized code, and the second improving the efficiency of the synthesis procedure itself. The first contribution is to have the synthesis procedure explore a variety of (sequential) semantics-preserving program transformations. Classically, only one such transformation has been considered, namely, the insertion of synchronization primitives (such as locks). Based on common manual bug-fixing techniques used by Linux device-driver developers, we explore additional, more efficient transformations, such as the reordering of independent instructions. The second contribution is to speed up the counterexample-guided removal of concurrency bugs within the synthesis procedure by considering partial-order traces (instead of linear traces) as counterexamples. A partial-order error trace represents a set of linear (interleaved) traces of a concurrent program all of which lead to the same error. By eliminating a partial-order error trace, we eliminate in a single iteration of the synthesis procedure all linearizations of the partial-order trace. We evaluated our techniques on several simplified examples of real concurrency bugs that occurred in Linux device drivers. AU - Cerny, Pavol AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Radhakrishna, Arjun AU - Ryzhyk, Leonid AU - Tarrach, Thorsten ID - 2445 TI - Efficient synthesis for concurrency by semantics-preserving transformations VL - 8044 ER - TY - CONF AB - Software model checking, as an undecidable problem, has three possible outcomes: (1) the program satisfies the specification, (2) the program does not satisfy the specification, and (3) the model checker fails. The third outcome usually manifests itself in a space-out, time-out, or one component of the verification tool giving up; in all of these failing cases, significant computation is performed by the verification tool before the failure, but no result is reported. We propose to reformulate the model-checking problem as follows, in order to have the verification tool report a summary of the performed work even in case of failure: given a program and a specification, the model checker returns a condition Ψ - usually a state predicate - such that the program satisfies the specification under the condition Ψ - that is, as long as the program does not leave the states in which Ψ is satisfied. In our experiments, we investigated as one major application of conditional model checking the sequential combination of model checkers with information passing. We give the condition that one model checker produces, as input to a second conditional model checker, such that the verification problem for the second is restricted to the part of the state space that is not covered by the condition, i.e., the second model checker works on the problems that the first model checker could not solve. Our experiments demonstrate that repeated application of conditional model checkers, passing information from one model checker to the next, can significantly improve the verification results and performance, i.e., we can now verify programs that we could not verify before. AU - Beyer, Dirk AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Keremoglu, Mehmet AU - Wendler, Philipp ID - 1384 T2 - Proceedings of the ACM SIGSOFT 20th International Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering TI - Conditional model checking: A technique to pass information between verifiers ER - TY - JOUR AB - We introduce propagation models (PMs), a formalism able to express several kinds of equations that describe the behavior of biochemical reaction networks. Furthermore, we introduce the propagation abstract data type (PADT), which separates concerns regarding different numerical algorithms for the transient analysis of biochemical reaction networks from concerns regarding their implementation, thus allowing for portable and efficient solutions. The state of a propagation abstract data type is given by a vector that assigns mass values to a set of nodes, and its (next) operator propagates mass values through this set of nodes. We propose an approximate implementation of the (next) operator, based on threshold abstraction, which propagates only "significant" mass values and thus achieves a compromise between efficiency and accuracy. Finally, we give three use cases for propagation models: the chemical master equation (CME), the reaction rate equation (RRE), and a hybrid method that combines these two equations. These three applications use propagation models in order to propagate probabilities and/or expected values and variances of the model's variables. AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Mateescu, Maria ID - 2302 IS - 2 JF - IEEE ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics TI - The propagation approach for computing biochemical reaction networks VL - 10 ER - TY - JOUR AB - We study evolutionary game theory in a setting where individuals learn from each other. We extend the traditional approach by assuming that a population contains individuals with different learning abilities. In particular, we explore the situation where individuals have different search spaces, when attempting to learn the strategies of others. The search space of an individual specifies the set of strategies learnable by that individual. The search space is genetically given and does not change under social evolutionary dynamics. We introduce a general framework and study a specific example in the context of direct reciprocity. For this example, we obtain the counter intuitive result that cooperation can only evolve for intermediate benefit-to-cost ratios, while small and large benefit-to-cost ratios favor defection. Our paper is a step toward making a connection between computational learning theory and evolutionary game dynamics. AU - Chatterjee, Krishnendu AU - Zufferey, Damien AU - Nowak, Martin ID - 2848 JF - Journal of Theoretical Biology TI - Evolutionary game dynamics in populations with different learners VL - 301 ER - TY - CONF AB - Quantitative automata are nondeterministic finite automata with edge weights. They value a run by some function from the sequence of visited weights to the reals, and value a word by its minimal/maximal run. They generalize boolean automata, and have gained much attention in recent years. Unfortunately, important automaton classes, such as sum, discounted-sum, and limit-average automata, cannot be determinized. Yet, the quantitative setting provides the potential of approximate determinization. We define approximate determinization with respect to a distance function, and investigate this potential. We show that sum automata cannot be determinized approximately with respect to any distance function. However, restricting to nonnegative weights allows for approximate determinization with respect to some distance functions. Discounted-sum automata allow for approximate determinization, as the influence of a word’s suffix is decaying. However, the naive approach, of unfolding the automaton computations up to a sufficient level, is shown to be doubly exponential in the discount factor. We provide an alternative construction that is singly exponential in the discount factor, in the precision, and in the number of states. We prove matching lower bounds, showing exponential dependency on each of these three parameters. Average and limit-average automata are shown to prohibit approximate determinization with respect to any distance function, and this is the case even for two weights, 0 and 1. AU - Boker, Udi AU - Henzinger, Thomas A ID - 2891 T2 - Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics TI - Approximate determinization of quantitative automata VL - 18 ER - TY - CONF AB - Systems are often specified using multiple requirements on their behavior. In practice, these requirements can be contradictory. The classical approach to specification, verification, and synthesis demands more detailed specifications that resolve any contradictions in the requirements. These detailed specifications are usually large, cumbersome, and hard to maintain or modify. In contrast, quantitative frameworks allow the formalization of the intuitive idea that what is desired is an implementation that comes "closest" to satisfying the mutually incompatible requirements, according to a measure of fit that can be defined by the requirements engineer. One flexible framework for quantifying how "well" an implementation satisfies a specification is offered by simulation distances that are parameterized by an error model. We introduce this framework, study its properties, and provide an algorithmic solution for the following quantitative synthesis question: given two (or more) behavioral requirements specified by possibly incompatible finite-state machines, and an error model, find the finite-state implementation that minimizes the maximal simulation distance to the given requirements. Furthermore, we generalize the framework to handle infinite alphabets (for example, realvalued domains). We also demonstrate how quantitative specifications based on simulation distances might lead to smaller and easier to modify specifications. Finally, we illustrate our approach using case studies on error correcting codes and scheduler synthesis. AU - Cerny, Pavol AU - Gopi, Sivakanth AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Radhakrishna, Arjun AU - Totla, Nishant ID - 2890 T2 - Proceedings of the tenth ACM international conference on Embedded software TI - Synthesis from incompatible specifications ER - TY - CONF AB - Formal verification aims to improve the quality of hardware and software by detecting errors before they do harm. At the basis of formal verification lies the logical notion of correctness, which purports to capture whether or not a circuit or program behaves as desired. We suggest that the boolean partition into correct and incorrect systems falls short of the practical need to assess the behavior of hardware and software in a more nuanced fashion against multiple criteria. AU - Henzinger, Thomas A ID - 2888 T2 - Conference proceedings MODELS 2012 TI - Quantitative reactive models VL - 7590 ER - TY - CONF AB - The classical (boolean) notion of refinement for behavioral interfaces of system components is the alternating refinement preorder. In this paper, we define a quantitative measure for interfaces, called interface simulation distance. It makes the alternating refinement preorder quantitative by, intu- itively, tolerating errors (while counting them) in the alternating simulation game. We show that the interface simulation distance satisfies the triangle inequality, that the distance between two interfaces does not increase under parallel composition with a third interface, and that the distance between two interfaces can be bounded from above and below by distances between abstractions of the two interfaces. We illustrate the framework, and the properties of the distances under composition of interfaces, with two case studies. AU - Cerny, Pavol AU - Chmelik, Martin AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Radhakrishna, Arjun ID - 2916 T2 - Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science TI - Interface Simulation Distances VL - 96 ER - TY - CONF AB - The notion of delays arises naturally in many computational models, such as, in the design of circuits, control systems, and dataflow languages. In this work, we introduce automata with delay blocks (ADBs), extending finite state automata with variable time delay blocks, for deferring individual transition output symbols, in a discrete-time setting. We show that the ADB languages strictly subsume the regular languages, and are incomparable in expressive power to the context-free languages. We show that ADBs are closed under union, concatenation and Kleene star, and under intersection with regular languages, but not closed under complementation and intersection with other ADB languages. We show that the emptiness and the membership problems are decidable in polynomial time for ADBs, whereas the universality problem is undecidable. Finally we consider the linear-time model checking problem, i.e., whether the language of an ADB is contained in a regular language, and show that the model checking problem is PSPACE-complete. Copyright 2012 ACM. AU - Chatterjee, Krishnendu AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Prabhu, Vinayak ID - 2936 T2 - roceedings of the tenth ACM international conference on Embedded software TI - Finite automata with time delay blocks ER - TY - CONF AB - Interface theories provide a formal framework for component-based development of software and hardware which supports the incremental design of systems and the independent implementability of components. These capabilities are ensured through mathematical properties of the parallel composition operator and the refinement relation for components. More recently, a conjunction operation was added to interface theories in order to provide support for handling multiple viewpoints, requirements engineering, and component reuse. Unfortunately, the conjunction operator does not allow independent implementability in general. In this paper, we study conditions that need to be imposed on interface models in order to enforce independent implementability with respect to conjunction. We focus on multiple viewpoint specifications and propose a new compatibility criterion between two interfaces, which we call orthogonality. We show that orthogonal interfaces can be refined separately, while preserving both orthogonality and composability with other interfaces. We illustrate the independent implementability of different viewpoints with a FIFO buffer example. AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Nickovic, Dejan ID - 2942 T2 - Conference proceedings Monterey Workshop 2012 TI - Independent implementability of viewpoints VL - 7539 ER - TY - CONF AB - Continuous-time Markov chains (CTMC) with their rich theory and efficient simulation algorithms have been successfully used in modeling stochastic processes in diverse areas such as computer science, physics, and biology. However, systems that comprise non-instantaneous events cannot be accurately and efficiently modeled with CTMCs. In this paper we define delayed CTMCs, an extension of CTMCs that allows for the specification of a lower bound on the time interval between an event's initiation and its completion, and we propose an algorithm for the computation of their behavior. Our algorithm effectively decomposes the computation into two stages: a pure CTMC governs event initiations while a deterministic process guarantees lower bounds on event completion times. Furthermore, from the nature of delayed CTMCs, we obtain a parallelized version of our algorithm. We use our formalism to model genetic regulatory circuits (biological systems where delayed events are common) and report on the results of our numerical algorithm as run on a cluster. We compare performance and accuracy of our results with results obtained by using pure CTMCs. © 2012 Springer-Verlag. AU - Guet, Calin C AU - Gupta, Ashutosh AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Mateescu, Maria AU - Sezgin, Ali ID - 3136 TI - Delayed continuous time Markov chains for genetic regulatory circuits VL - 7358 ER - TY - CONF AB - Given a dense-time real-valued signal and a parameterized temporal logic formula with both magnitude and timing parameters, we compute the subset of the parameter space that renders the formula satisfied by the trace. We provide two preliminary implementations, one which follows the exact semantics and attempts to compute the validity domain by quantifier elimination in linear arithmetics and one which conducts adaptive search in the parameter space. AU - Asarin, Eugene AU - Donzé, Alexandre AU - Maler, Oded AU - Nickovic, Dejan ID - 3162 TI - Parametric identification of temporal properties VL - 7186 ER - TY - CONF AB - We describe a framework for reasoning about programs with lists carrying integer numerical data. We use abstract domains to describe and manipulate complex constraints on configurations of these programs mixing constraints on the shape of the heap, sizes of the lists, on the multisets of data stored in these lists, and on the data at their different positions. Moreover, we provide powerful techniques for automatic validation of Hoare-triples and invariant checking, as well as for automatic synthesis of invariants and procedure summaries using modular inter-procedural analysis. The approach has been implemented in a tool called Celia and experimented successfully on a large benchmark of programs. AU - Bouajjani, Ahmed AU - Dragoi, Cezara AU - Enea, Constantin AU - Sighireanu, Mihaela ID - 3253 TI - Abstract domains for automated reasoning about list manipulating programs with infinite data VL - 7148 ER - TY - JOUR AB - The induction of a signaling pathway is characterized by transient complex formation and mutual posttranslational modification of proteins. To faithfully capture this combinatorial process in a mathematical model is an important challenge in systems biology. Exploiting the limited context on which most binding and modification events are conditioned, attempts have been made to reduce the combinatorial complexity by quotienting the reachable set of molecular species into species aggregates while preserving the deterministic semantics of the thermodynamic limit. Recently, we proposed a quotienting that also preserves the stochastic semantics and that is complete in the sense that the semantics of individual species can be recovered from the aggregate semantics. In this paper, we prove that this quotienting yields a sufficient condition for weak lumpability (that is to say that the quotient system is still Markovian for a given set of initial distributions) and that it gives rise to a backward Markov bisimulation between the original and aggregated transition system (which means that the conditional probability of being in a given state in the original system knowing that we are in its equivalence class is an invariant of the system). We illustrate the framework on a case study of the epidermal growth factor (EGF)/insulin receptor crosstalk. AU - Feret, Jérôme AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Koeppl, Heinz AU - Petrov, Tatjana ID - 3168 JF - Theoretical Computer Science TI - Lumpability abstractions of rule based systems VL - 431 ER - TY - JOUR AB - We summarize classical and recent results about two-player games played on graphs with ω-regular objectives. These games have applications in the verification and synthesis of reactive systems. Important distinctions are whether a graph game is turn-based or concurrent; deterministic or stochastic; zero-sum or not. We cluster known results and open problems according to these classifications. AU - Chatterjee, Krishnendu AU - Henzinger, Thomas A ID - 3846 IS - 2 JF - Journal of Computer and System Sciences TI - A survey of stochastic ω regular games VL - 78 ER - TY - JOUR AB - We consider two-player zero-sum stochastic games on graphs with ω-regular winning conditions specified as parity objectives. These games have applications in the design and control of reactive systems. We survey the complexity results for the problem of deciding the winner in such games, and in classes of interest obtained as special cases, based on the information and the power of randomization available to the players, on the class of objectives and on the winning mode. On the basis of information, these games can be classified as follows: (a) partial-observation (both players have partial view of the game); (b) one-sided partial-observation (one player has partial-observation and the other player has complete-observation); and (c) complete-observation (both players have complete view of the game). The one-sided partial-observation games have two important subclasses: the one-player games, known as partial-observation Markov decision processes (POMDPs), and the blind one-player games, known as probabilistic automata. On the basis of randomization, (a) the players may not be allowed to use randomization (pure strategies), or (b) they may choose a probability distribution over actions but the actual random choice is external and not visible to the player (actions invisible), or (c) they may use full randomization. Finally, various classes of games are obtained by restricting the parity objective to a reachability, safety, Büchi, or coBüchi condition. We also consider several winning modes, such as sure-winning (i.e., all outcomes of a strategy have to satisfy the winning condition), almost-sure winning (i.e., winning with probability 1), limit-sure winning (i.e., winning with probability arbitrarily close to 1), and value-threshold winning (i.e., winning with probability at least ν, where ν is a given rational). AU - Chatterjee, Krishnendu AU - Doyen, Laurent AU - Henzinger, Thomas A ID - 3128 IS - 2 JF - Formal Methods in System Design TI - A survey of partial-observation stochastic parity games VL - 43 ER - TY - CONF AB - We propose synchronous interfaces, a new interface theory for discrete-time systems. We use an application to time-triggered scheduling to drive the design choices for our formalism; in particular, additionally to deriving useful mathematical properties, we focus on providing a syntax which is adapted to natural high-level system modeling. As a result, we develop an interface model that relies on a guarded-command based language and is equipped with shared variables and explicit discrete-time clocks. We define all standard interface operations: compatibility checking, composition, refinement, and shared refinement. Apart from the synchronous interface model, the contribution of this paper is the establishment of a formal relation between interface theories and real-time scheduling, where we demonstrate a fully automatic framework for the incremental computation of time-triggered schedules. AU - Delahaye, Benoît AU - Fahrenberg, Uli AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Legay, Axel AU - Nickovic, Dejan ID - 3155 TI - Synchronous interface theories and time triggered scheduling VL - 7273 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Hierarchical Timing Language (HTL) is a coordination language for distributed, hard real-time applications. HTL is a hierarchical extension of Giotto and, like its predecessor, based on the logical execution time (LET) paradigm of real-time programming. Giotto is compiled into code for a virtual machine, called the EmbeddedMachine (or E machine). If HTL is targeted to the E machine, then the hierarchicalprogram structure needs to be flattened; the flattening makes separatecompilation difficult, and may result in E machinecode of exponential size. In this paper, we propose a generalization of the E machine, which supports a hierarchicalprogram structure at runtime through real-time trigger mechanisms that are arranged in a tree. We present the generalized E machine, and a modular compiler for HTL that generates code of linear size. The compiler may generate code for any part of a given HTL program separately in any order. AU - Ghosal, Arkadeb AU - Iercan, Daniel AU - Kirsch, Christoph AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Sangiovanni Vincentelli, Alberto ID - 3836 IS - 2 JF - Science of Computer Programming TI - Separate compilation of hierarchical real-time programs into linear-bounded embedded machine code VL - 77 ER - TY - JOUR AB - For programs whose data variables range over Boolean or finite domains, program verification is decidable, and this forms the basis of recent tools for software model checking. In this article, we consider algorithmic verification of programs that use Boolean variables, and in addition, access a single read-only array whose length is potentially unbounded, and whose elements range over an unbounded data domain. We show that the reachability problem, while undecidable in general, is (1) PSPACE-complete for programs in which the array-accessing for-loops are not nested, (2) decidable for a restricted class of programs with doubly nested loops. The second result establishes connections to automata and logics defining languages over data words. AU - Alur, Rajeev AU - Cerny, Pavol AU - Weinstein, Scott ID - 2967 IS - 3 JF - ACM Transactions on Computational Logic (TOCL) TI - Algorithmic analysis of array-accessing programs VL - 13 ER - TY - JOUR AB - We solve the longstanding open problems of the blow-up involved in the translations, when possible, of a nondeterministic Büchi word automaton (NBW) to a nondeterministic co-Büchi word automaton (NCW) and to a deterministic co-Büchi word automaton (DCW). For the NBW to NCW translation, the currently known upper bound is 2o(nlog n) and the lower bound is 1.5n. We improve the upper bound to n2n and describe a matching lower bound of 2ω(n). For the NBW to DCW translation, the currently known upper bound is 2o(nlog n). We improve it to 2 o(n), which is asymptotically tight. Both of our upper-bound constructions are based on a simple subset construction, do not involve intermediate automata with richer acceptance conditions, and can be implemented symbolically. We continue and solve the open problems of translating nondeterministic Streett, Rabin, Muller, and parity word automata to NCW and to DCW. Going via an intermediate NBW is not optimal and we describe direct, simple, and asymptotically tight constructions, involving a 2o(n) blow-up. The constructions are variants of the subset construction, providing a unified approach for translating all common classes of automata to NCW and DCW. Beyond the theoretical importance of the results, we point to numerous applications of the new constructions. In particular, they imply a simple subset-construction based translation, when possible, of LTL to deterministic Büchi word automata. AU - Boker, Udi AU - Kupferman, Orna ID - 494 IS - 4 JF - ACM Transactions on Computational Logic (TOCL) TI - Translating to Co-Büchi made tight, unified, and useful VL - 13 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Boolean notions of correctness are formalized by preorders on systems. Quantitative measures of correctness can be formalized by real-valued distance functions between systems, where the distance between implementation and specification provides a measure of "fit" or "desirability". We extend the simulation preorder to the quantitative setting by making each player of a simulation game pay a certain price for her choices. We use the resulting games with quantitative objectives to define three different simulation distances. The correctness distance measures how much the specification must be changed in order to be satisfied by the implementation. The coverage distance measures how much the implementation restricts the degrees of freedom offered by the specification. The robustness distance measures how much a system can deviate from the implementation description without violating the specification. We consider these distances for safety as well as liveness specifications. The distances can be computed in polynomial time for safety specifications, and for liveness specifications given by weak fairness constraints. We show that the distance functions satisfy the triangle inequality, that the distance between two systems does not increase under parallel composition with a third system, and that the distance between two systems can be bounded from above and below by distances between abstractions of the two systems. These properties suggest that our simulation distances provide an appropriate basis for a quantitative theory of discrete systems. We also demonstrate how the robustness distance can be used to measure how many transmission errors are tolerated by error correcting codes. AU - Cerny, Pavol AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Radhakrishna, Arjun ID - 3249 IS - 1 JF - Theoretical Computer Science TI - Simulation distances VL - 413 ER - TY - CONF AB - We propose a logic-based framework for automated reasoning about sequential programs manipulating singly-linked lists and arrays with unbounded data. We introduce the logic SLAD, which allows combining shape constraints, written in a fragment of Separation Logic, with data and size constraints. We address the problem of checking the entailment between SLAD formulas, which is crucial in performing pre-post condition reasoning. Although this problem is undecidable in general for SLAD, we propose a sound and powerful procedure that is able to solve this problem for a large class of formulas, beyond the capabilities of existing techniques and tools. We prove that this procedure is complete, i.e., it is actually a decision procedure for this problem, for an important fragment of SLAD including known decidable logics. We implemented this procedure and shown its preciseness and its efficiency on a significant benchmark of formulas. AU - Bouajjani, Ahmed AU - Dragoi, Cezara AU - Enea, Constantin AU - Sighireanu, Mihaela ID - 10903 SN - 0302-9743 T2 - Automated Technology for Verification and Analysis TI - Accurate invariant checking for programs manipulating lists and arrays with infinite data VL - 7561 ER - TY - CONF AB - HSF(C) is a tool that automates verification of safety and liveness properties for C programs. This paper describes the verification approach taken by HSF(C) and provides instructions on how to install and use the tool. AU - Grebenshchikov, Sergey AU - Gupta, Ashutosh AU - Lopes, Nuno P. AU - Popeea, Corneliu AU - Rybalchenko, Andrey ED - Flanagan, Cormac ED - König, Barbara ID - 10906 SN - 0302-9743 T2 - Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems TI - HSF(C): A software verifier based on Horn clauses VL - 7214 ER - TY - CHAP AU - Gupta, Ashutosh ID - 5745 SN - 0302-9743 T2 - Automated Technology for Verification and Analysis TI - Improved Single Pass Algorithms for Resolution Proof Reduction VL - 7561 ER - TY - CONF AB - Many infinite state systems can be seen as well-structured transition systems (WSTS), i.e., systems equipped with a well-quasi-ordering on states that is also a simulation relation. WSTS are an attractive target for formal analysis because there exist generic algorithms that decide interesting verification problems for this class. Among the most popular algorithms are acceleration-based forward analyses for computing the covering set. Termination of these algorithms can only be guaranteed for flattable WSTS. Yet, many WSTS of practical interest are not flattable and the question whether any given WSTS is flattable is itself undecidable. We therefore propose an analysis that computes the covering set and captures the essence of acceleration-based algorithms, but sacrifices precision for guaranteed termination. Our analysis is an abstract interpretation whose abstract domain builds on the ideal completion of the well-quasi-ordered state space, and a widening operator that mimics acceleration and controls the loss of precision of the analysis. We present instances of our framework for various classes of WSTS. Our experience with a prototype implementation indicates that, despite the inherent precision loss, our analysis often computes the precise covering set of the analyzed system. AU - Zufferey, Damien AU - Wies, Thomas AU - Henzinger, Thomas A ID - 3251 TI - Ideal abstractions for well structured transition systems VL - 7148 ER - TY - CONF AB - Verification of programs with procedures, multi-threaded programs, and higher-order functional programs can be effectively au- tomated using abstraction and refinement schemes that rely on spurious counterexamples for abstraction discovery. The analysis of counterexam- ples can be automated by a series of interpolation queries, or, alterna- tively, as a constraint solving query expressed by a set of recursion free Horn clauses. (A set of interpolation queries can be formulated as a single constraint over Horn clauses with linear dependency structure between the unknown relations.) In this paper we present an algorithm for solving recursion free Horn clauses over a combined theory of linear real/rational arithmetic and uninterpreted functions. Our algorithm performs resolu- tion to deal with the clausal structure and relies on partial solutions to deal with (non-local) instances of functionality axioms. AU - Gupta, Ashutosh AU - Popeea, Corneliu AU - Rybalchenko, Andrey ED - Yang, Hongseok ID - 3264 TI - Solving recursion-free Horn clauses over LI+UIF VL - 7078 ER - TY - CONF AB - Cloud computing aims to give users virtually unlimited pay-per-use computing resources without the burden of managing the underlying infrastructure. We present a new job execution environment Flextic that exploits scal- able static scheduling techniques to provide the user with a flexible pricing model, such as a tradeoff between dif- ferent degrees of execution speed and execution price, and at the same time, reduce scheduling overhead for the cloud provider. We have evaluated a prototype of Flextic on Amazon EC2 and compared it against Hadoop. For various data parallel jobs from machine learning, im- age processing, and gene sequencing that we considered, Flextic has low scheduling overhead and reduces job du- ration by up to 15% compared to Hadoop, a dynamic cloud scheduler. AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Singh, Anmol AU - Singh, Vasu AU - Wies, Thomas AU - Zufferey, Damien ID - 3302 TI - Static scheduling in clouds ER - TY - CONF AB - The chemical master equation is a differential equation describing the time evolution of the probability distribution over the possible “states” of a biochemical system. The solution of this equation is of interest within the systems biology field ever since the importance of the molec- ular noise has been acknowledged. Unfortunately, most of the systems do not have analytical solutions, and numerical solutions suffer from the course of dimensionality and therefore need to be approximated. Here, we introduce the concept of tail approximation, which retrieves an approximation of the probabilities in the tail of a distribution from the total probability of the tail and its conditional expectation. This approximation method can then be used to numerically compute the solution of the chemical master equation on a subset of the state space, thus fighting the explosion of the state space, for which this problem is renowned. AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Mateescu, Maria ID - 3301 TI - Tail approximation for the chemical master equation ER - TY - CONF AB - We introduce propagation models, a formalism designed to support general and efficient data structures for the transient analysis of biochemical reaction networks. We give two use cases for propagation abstract data types: the uniformization method and numerical integration. We also sketch an implementation of a propagation abstract data type, which uses abstraction to approximate states. AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Mateescu, Maria ID - 3299 TI - Propagation models for computing biochemical reaction networks ER - TY - CONF AB - In addition to being correct, a system should be robust, that is, it should behave reasonably even after receiving unexpected inputs. In this paper, we summarize two formal notions of robustness that we have introduced previously for reactive systems. One of the notions is based on assigning costs for failures on a user-provided notion of incorrect transitions in a specification. Here, we define a system to be robust if a finite number of incorrect inputs does not lead to an infinite number of incorrect outputs. We also give a more refined notion of robustness that aims to minimize the ratio of output failures to input failures. The second notion is aimed at liveness. In contrast to the previous notion, it has no concept of recovery from an error. Instead, it compares the ratio of the number of liveness constraints that the system violates to the number of liveness constraints that the environment violates. AU - Bloem, Roderick AU - Chatterjee, Krishnendu AU - Greimel, Karin AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Jobstmann, Barbara ID - 3316 T2 - 6th IEEE International Symposium on Industrial and Embedded Systems TI - Specification-centered robustness ER - TY - JOUR AB - Compositional theories are crucial when designing large and complex systems from smaller components. In this work we propose such a theory for synchronous concurrent systems. Our approach follows so-called interface theories, which use game-theoretic interpretations of composition and refinement. These are appropriate for systems with distinct inputs and outputs, and explicit conditions on inputs that must be enforced during composition. Our interfaces model systems that execute in an infinite sequence of synchronous rounds. At each round, a contract must be satisfied. The contract is simply a relation specifying the set of valid input/output pairs. Interfaces can be composed by parallel, serial or feedback composition. A refinement relation between interfaces is defined, and shown to have two main properties: (1) it is preserved by composition, and (2) it is equivalent to substitutability, namely, the ability to replace an interface by another one in any context. Shared refinement and abstraction operators, corresponding to greatest lower and least upper bounds with respect to refinement, are also defined. Input-complete interfaces, that impose no restrictions on inputs, and deterministic interfaces, that produce a unique output for any legal input, are discussed as special cases, and an interesting duality between the two classes is exposed. A number of illustrative examples are provided, as well as algorithms to compute compositions, check refinement, and so on, for finite-state interfaces. AU - Tripakis, Stavros AU - Lickly, Ben AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Lee, Edward ID - 3353 IS - 4 JF - ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS) TI - A theory of synchronous relational interfaces VL - 33 ER - TY - CONF AB - Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) protocols aim to improve the reliability of distributed systems. They enable systems to tolerate arbitrary failures in a bounded number of nodes. BFT protocols are usually proven correct for certain safety and liveness properties. However, recent studies have shown that the performance of state-of-the-art BFT protocols decreases drastically in the presence of even a single malicious node. This motivates a formal quantitative analysis of BFT protocols to investigate their performance characteristics under different scenarios. We present HyPerf, a new hybrid methodology based on model checking and simulation techniques for evaluating the performance of BFT protocols. We build a transition system corresponding to a BFT protocol and systematically explore the set of behaviors allowed by the protocol. We associate certain timing information with different operations in the protocol, like cryptographic operations and message transmission. After an elaborate state exploration, we use the time information to evaluate the performance characteristics of the protocol using simulation techniques. We integrate our framework in Mace, a tool for building and verifying distributed systems. We evaluate the performance of PBFT using our framework. We describe two different use-cases of our methodology. For the benign operation of the protocol, we use the time information as random variables to compute the probability distribution of the execution times. In the presence of faults, we estimate the worst-case performance of the protocol for various attacks that can be employed by malicious nodes. Our results show the importance of hybrid techniques in systematically analyzing the performance of large-scale systems. AU - Halalai, Raluca AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Singh, Vasu ID - 3355 TI - Quantitative evaluation of BFT protocols ER - TY - JOUR AB - We consider two-player games played on a finite state space for an infinite number of rounds. The games are concurrent: in each round, the two players (player 1 and player 2) choose their moves independently and simultaneously; the current state and the two moves determine the successor state. We consider ω-regular winning conditions specified as parity objectives. Both players are allowed to use randomization when choosing their moves. We study the computation of the limit-winning set of states, consisting of the states where the sup-inf value of the game for player 1 is 1: in other words, a state is limit-winning if player 1 can ensure a probability of winning arbitrarily close to 1. We show that the limit-winning set can be computed in O(n2d+2) time, where n is the size of the game structure and 2d is the number of priorities (or colors). The membership problem of whether a state belongs to the limit-winning set can be decided in NP ∩ coNP. While this complexity is the same as for the simpler class of turn-based parity games, where in each state only one of the two players has a choice of moves, our algorithms are considerably more involved than those for turn-based games. This is because concurrent games do not satisfy two of the most fundamental properties of turn-based parity games. First, in concurrent games limit-winning strategies require randomization; and second, they require infinite memory. AU - Chatterjee, Krishnendu AU - De Alfaro, Luca AU - Henzinger, Thomas A ID - 3354 IS - 4 JF - ACM Transactions on Computational Logic (TOCL) TI - Qualitative concurrent parity games VL - 12 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Exploring the connection of biology with reactive systems to better understand living systems. AU - Fisher, Jasmin AU - Harel, David AU - Henzinger, Thomas A ID - 3352 IS - 10 JF - Communications of the ACM TI - Biology as reactivity VL - 54 ER - TY - CONF AB - State-transition systems communicating by shared variables have been the underlying model of choice for applications of model checking. Such formalisms, however, have difficulty with modeling process creation or death and communication reconfigurability. Here, we introduce “dynamic reactive modules” (DRM), a state-transition modeling formalism that supports dynamic reconfiguration and creation/death of processes. The resulting formalism supports two types of variables, data variables and reference variables. Reference variables enable changing the connectivity between processes and referring to instances of processes. We show how this new formalism supports parallel composition and refinement through trace containment. DRM provide a natural language for modeling (and ultimately reasoning about) biological systems and multiple threads communicating through shared variables. AU - Fisher, Jasmin AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Nickovic, Dejan AU - Piterman, Nir AU - Singh, Anmol AU - Vardi, Moshe ID - 3362 TI - Dynamic reactive modules VL - 6901 ER - TY - CONF AB - We present the tool Quasy, a quantitative synthesis tool. Quasy takes qualitative and quantitative specifications and automatically constructs a system that satisfies the qualitative specification and optimizes the quantitative specification, if such a system exists. The user can choose between a system that satisfies and optimizes the specifications (a) under all possible environment behaviors or (b) under the most-likely environment behaviors given as a probability distribution on the possible input sequences. Quasy solves these two quantitative synthesis problems by reduction to instances of 2-player games and Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with quantitative winning objectives. Quasy can also be seen as a game solver for quantitative games. Most notable, it can solve lexicographic mean-payoff games with 2 players, MDPs with mean-payoff objectives, and ergodic MDPs with mean-payoff parity objectives. AU - Chatterjee, Krishnendu AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Jobstmann, Barbara AU - Singh, Rohit ID - 3365 TI - QUASY: quantitative synthesis tool VL - 6605 ER - TY - GEN AB - We consider probabilistic automata on infinite words with acceptance defined by safety, reachability, Büchi, coBüchi, and limit-average conditions. We consider quantitative and qualitative decision problems. We present extensions and adaptations of proofs for probabilistic finite automata and present a complete characterization of the decidability and undecidability frontier of the quantitative and qualitative decision problems for probabilistic automata on infinite words. AU - Chatterjee, Krishnendu AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Tracol, Mathieu ID - 3363 TI - The decidability frontier for probabilistic automata on infinite words ER - TY - JOUR AB - In this survey, we compare several languages for specifying Markovian population models such as queuing networks and chemical reaction networks. All these languages — matrix descriptions, stochastic Petri nets, stoichiometric equations, stochastic process algebras, and guarded command models — describe continuous-time Markov chains, but they differ according to important properties, such as compositionality, expressiveness and succinctness, executability, and ease of use. Moreover, they provide different support for checking the well-formedness of a model and for analyzing a model. AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Jobstmann, Barbara AU - Wolf, Verena ID - 3381 IS - 4 JF - IJFCS: International Journal of Foundations of Computer Science TI - Formalisms for specifying Markovian population models VL - 22 ER - TY - JOUR AB - We consider two-player games played in real time on game structures with clocks where the objectives of players are described using parity conditions. The games are concurrent in that at each turn, both players independently propose a time delay and an action, and the action with the shorter delay is chosen. To prevent a player from winning by blocking time, we restrict each player to play strategies that ensure that the player cannot be responsible for causing a zeno run. First, we present an efficient reduction of these games to turn-based (i.e., not concurrent) finite-state (i.e., untimed) parity games. Our reduction improves the best known complexity for solving timed parity games. Moreover, the rich class of algorithms for classical parity games can now be applied to timed parity games. The states of the resulting game are based on clock regions of the original game, and the state space of the finite game is linear in the size of the region graph. Second, we consider two restricted classes of strategies for the player that represents the controller in a real-time synthesis problem, namely, limit-robust and bounded-robust winning strategies. Using a limit-robust winning strategy, the controller cannot choose an exact real-valued time delay but must allow for some nonzero jitter in each of its actions. If there is a given lower bound on the jitter, then the strategy is bounded-robust winning. We show that exact strategies are more powerful than limit-robust strategies, which are more powerful than bounded-robust winning strategies for any bound. For both kinds of robust strategies, we present efficient reductions to standard timed automaton games. These reductions provide algorithms for the synthesis of robust real-time controllers. AU - Chatterjee, Krishnendu AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Prabhu, Vinayak ID - 3315 IS - 4 JF - Logical Methods in Computer Science TI - Timed parity games: Complexity and robustness VL - 7 ER - TY - CONF AB - Weighted automata map input words to numerical values. Ap- plications of weighted automata include formal verification of quantitative properties, as well as text, speech, and image processing. A weighted au- tomaton is defined with respect to a semiring. For the tropical semiring, the weight of a run is the sum of the weights of the transitions taken along the run, and the value of a word is the minimal weight of an accepting run on it. In the 90’s, Krob studied the decidability of problems on rational series defined with respect to the tropical semiring. Rational series are strongly related to weighted automata, and Krob’s results apply to them. In par- ticular, it follows from Krob’s results that the universality problem (that is, deciding whether the values of all words are below some threshold) is decidable for weighted automata defined with respect to the tropical semir- ing with domain ∪ {∞}, and that the equality problem is undecidable when the domain is ∪ {∞}. In this paper we continue the study of the borders of decidability in weighted automata, describe alternative and direct proofs of the above results, and tighten them further. Unlike the proofs of Krob, which are algebraic in their nature, our proofs stay in the terrain of state machines, and the reduction is from the halting problem of a two-counter machine. This enables us to significantly simplify Krob’s reasoning, make the un- decidability result accessible to the automata-theoretic community, and strengthen it to apply already to a very simple class of automata: all the states are accepting, there are no initial nor final weights, and all the weights on the transitions are from the set {−1, 0, 1}. The fact we work directly with the automata enables us to tighten also the decidability re- sults and to show that the universality problem for weighted automata defined with respect to the tropical semiring with domain ∪ {∞}, and in fact even with domain ≥0 ∪ {∞}, is PSPACE-complete. Our results thus draw a sharper picture about the decidability of decision problems for weighted automata, in both the front of containment vs. universality and the front of the ∪ {∞} vs. the ∪ {∞} domains. AU - Almagor, Shaull AU - Boker, Udi AU - Kupferman, Orna ID - 3326 TI - What’s decidable about weighted automata VL - 6996 ER - TY - CONF AB - We introduce streaming data string transducers that map input data strings to output data strings in a single left-to-right pass in linear time. Data strings are (unbounded) sequences of data values, tagged with symbols from a finite set, over a potentially infinite data do- main that supports only the operations of equality and ordering. The transducer uses a finite set of states, a finite set of variables ranging over the data domain, and a finite set of variables ranging over data strings. At every step, it can make decisions based on the next in- put symbol, updating its state, remembering the input data value in its data variables, and updating data-string variables by concatenat- ing data-string variables and new symbols formed from data vari- ables, while avoiding duplication. We establish that the problems of checking functional equivalence of two streaming transducers, and of checking whether a streaming transducer satisfies pre/post verification conditions specified by streaming acceptors over in- put/output data-strings, are in PSPACE. We identify a class of imperative and a class of functional pro- grams, manipulating lists of data items, which can be effectively translated to streaming data-string transducers. The imperative pro- grams dynamically modify a singly-linked heap by changing next- pointers of heap-nodes and by adding new nodes. The main re- striction specifies how the next-pointers can be used for traversal. We also identify an expressively equivalent fragment of functional programs that traverse a list using syntactically restricted recursive calls. Our results lead to algorithms for assertion checking and for checking functional equivalence of two programs, written possibly in different programming styles, for commonly used routines such as insert, delete, and reverse. AU - Alur, Rajeev AU - Cerny, Pavol ID - 3325 IS - 1 TI - Streaming transducers for algorithmic verification of single pass list processing programs VL - 46 ER - TY - CONF AB - Automated termination provers often use the following schema to prove that a program terminates: construct a relational abstraction of the program's transition relation and then show that the relational abstraction is well-founded. The focus of current tools has been on developing sophisticated techniques for constructing the abstractions while relying on known decidable logics (such as linear arithmetic) to express them. We believe we can significantly increase the class of programs that are amenable to automated termination proofs by identifying more expressive decidable logics for reasoning about well-founded relations. We therefore present a new decision procedure for reasoning about multiset orderings, which are among the most powerful orderings used to prove termination. We show that, using our decision procedure, one can automatically prove termination of natural abstractions of programs. AU - Piskac, Ruzica AU - Wies, Thomas ED - Jhala, Ranjit ED - Schmidt, David ID - 3324 TI - Decision procedures for automating termination proofs VL - 6538 ER - TY - CONF AB - A discounted-sum automaton (NDA) is a nondeterministic finite automaton with edge weights, which values a run by the discounted sum of visited edge weights. More precisely, the weight in the i-th position of the run is divided by lambda^i, where the discount factor lambda is a fixed rational number greater than 1. Discounted summation is a common and useful measuring scheme, especially for infinite sequences, which reflects the assumption that earlier weights are more important than later weights. Determinizing automata is often essential, for example, in formal verification, where there are polynomial algorithms for comparing two deterministic NDAs, while the equivalence problem for NDAs is not known to be decidable. Unfortunately, however, discounted-sum automata are, in general, not determinizable: it is currently known that for every rational discount factor 1 < lambda < 2, there is an NDA with lambda (denoted lambda-NDA) that cannot be determinized. We provide positive news, showing that every NDA with an integral factor is determinizable. We also complete the picture by proving that the integers characterize exactly the discount factors that guarantee determinizability: we show that for every non-integral rational factor lambda, there is a nondeterminizable lambda-NDA. Finally, we prove that the class of NDAs with integral discount factors enjoys closure under the algebraic operations min, max, addition, and subtraction, which is not the case for general NDAs nor for deterministic NDAs. This shows that for integral discount factors, the class of NDAs forms an attractive specification formalism in quantitative formal verification. All our results hold equally for automata over finite words and for automata over infinite words. AU - Boker, Udi AU - Henzinger, Thomas A ID - 3360 TI - Determinizing discounted-sum automata VL - 12 ER - TY - CONF AB - In this paper, we investigate the computational complexity of quantitative information flow (QIF) problems. Information-theoretic quantitative relaxations of noninterference (based on Shannon entropy)have been introduced to enable more fine-grained reasoning about programs in situations where limited information flow is acceptable. The QIF bounding problem asks whether the information flow in a given program is bounded by a constant $d$. Our first result is that the QIF bounding problem is PSPACE-complete. The QIF memoryless synthesis problem asks whether it is possible to resolve nondeterministic choices in a given partial program in such a way that in the resulting deterministic program, the quantitative information flow is bounded by a given constant $d$. Our second result is that the QIF memoryless synthesis problem is also EXPTIME-complete. The QIF memoryless synthesis problem generalizes to QIF general synthesis problem which does not impose the memoryless requirement (that is, by allowing the synthesized program to have more variables then the original partial program). Our third result is that the QIF general synthesis problem is EXPTIME-hard. AU - Cerny, Pavol AU - Chatterjee, Krishnendu AU - Henzinger, Thomas A ID - 3361 TI - The complexity of quantitative information flow problems ER - TY - CONF AB - The static scheduling problem often arises as a fundamental problem in real-time systems and grid computing. We consider the problem of statically scheduling a large job expressed as a task graph on a large number of computing nodes, such as a data center. This paper solves the large-scale static scheduling problem using abstraction refinement, a technique commonly used in formal verification to efficiently solve computationally hard problems. A scheduler based on abstraction refinement first attempts to solve the scheduling problem with abstract representations of the job and the computing resources. As abstract representations are generally small, the scheduling can be done reasonably fast. If the obtained schedule does not meet specified quality conditions (like data center utilization or schedule makespan) then the scheduler refines the job and data center abstractions and, again solves the scheduling problem. We develop different schedulers based on abstraction refinement. We implemented these schedulers and used them to schedule task graphs from various computing domains on simulated data centers with realistic topologies. We compared the speed of scheduling and the quality of the produced schedules with our abstraction refinement schedulers against a baseline scheduler that does not use any abstraction. We conclude that abstraction refinement techniques give a significant speed-up compared to traditional static scheduling heuristics, at a reasonable cost in the quality of the produced schedules. We further used our static schedulers in an actual system that we deployed on Amazon EC2 and compared it against the Hadoop dynamic scheduler for large MapReduce jobs. Our experiments indicate that there is great potential for static scheduling techniques. AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Singh, Vasu AU - Wies, Thomas AU - Zufferey, Damien ID - 3358 TI - Scheduling large jobs by abstraction refinement ER - TY - CONF AB - Motivated by improvements in constraint-solving technology and by the increase of routinely available computational power, partial-program synthesis is emerging as an effective approach for increasing programmer productivity. The goal of the approach is to allow the programmer to specify a part of her intent imperatively (that is, give a partial program) and a part of her intent declaratively, by specifying which conditions need to be achieved or maintained. The task of the synthesizer is to construct a program that satisfies the specification. As an example, consider a partial program where threads access shared data without using any synchronization mechanism, and a declarative specification that excludes data races and deadlocks. The task of the synthesizer is then to place locks into the program code in order for the program to meet the specification. In this paper, we argue that quantitative objectives are needed in partial-program synthesis in order to produce higher-quality programs, while enabling simpler specifications. Returning to the example, the synthesizer could construct a naive solution that uses one global lock for shared data. This can be prevented either by constraining the solution space further (which is error-prone and partly defeats the point of synthesis), or by optimizing a quantitative objective that models performance. Other quantitative notions useful in synthesis include fault tolerance, robustness, resource (memory, power) consumption, and information flow. AU - Cerny, Pavol AU - Henzinger, Thomas A ID - 3359 TI - From boolean to quantitative synthesis ER - TY - CONF AB - We consider two-player graph games whose objectives are request-response condition, i.e conjunctions of conditions of the form "if a state with property Rq is visited, then later a state with property Rp is visited". The winner of such games can be decided in EXPTIME and the problem is known to be NP-hard. In this paper, we close this gap by showing that this problem is, in fact, EXPTIME-complete. We show that the problem becomes PSPACE-complete if we only consider games played on DAGs, and NP-complete or PTIME-complete if there is only one player (depending on whether he wants to enforce or spoil the request-response condition). We also present near-optimal bounds on the memory needed to design winning strategies for each player, in each case. AU - Chatterjee, Krishnendu AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Horn, Florian ED - Dediu, Adrian-Horia ED - Inenaga, Shunsuke ED - Martín-Vide, Carlos ID - 3357 TI - The complexity of request-response games VL - 6638 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Molecular noise, which arises from the randomness of the discrete events in the cell, significantly influences fundamental biological processes. Discrete-state continuous-time stochastic models (CTMC) can be used to describe such effects, but the calculation of the probabilities of certain events is computationally expensive. We present a comparison of two analysis approaches for CTMC. On one hand, we estimate the probabilities of interest using repeated Gillespie simulation and determine the statistical accuracy that we obtain. On the other hand, we apply a numerical reachability analysis that approximates the probability distributions of the system at several time instances. We use examples of cellular processes to demonstrate the superiority of the reachability analysis if accurate results are required. AU - Didier, Frédéric AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Mateescu, Maria AU - Wolf, Verena ID - 3364 IS - 21 JF - Theoretical Computer Science TI - Approximation of event probabilities in noisy cellular processes VL - 412 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Software transactional memories (STM) are described in the literature with assumptions of sequentially consistent program execution and atomicity of high level operations like read, write, and abort. However, in a realistic setting, processors use relaxed memory models to optimize hardware performance. Moreover, the atomicity of operations depends on the underlying hardware. This paper presents the first approach to verify STMs under relaxed memory models with atomicity of 32 bit loads and stores, and read-modify-write operations. We describe RML, a simple language for expressing concurrent programs. We develop a semantics of RML parametrized by a relaxed memory model. We then present our tool, FOIL, which takes as input the RML description of an STM algorithm restricted to two threads and two variables, and the description of a memory model, and automatically determines the locations of fences, which if inserted, ensure the correctness of the restricted STM algorithm under the given memory model. We use FOIL to verify DSTM, TL2, and McRT STM under the memory models of sequential consistency, total store order, partial store order, and relaxed memory order for two threads and two variables. Finally, we extend the verification results for DSTM and TL2 to an arbitrary number of threads and variables by manually proving that the structural properties of STMs are satisfied at the hardware level of atomicity under the considered relaxed memory models. AU - Guerraoui, Rachid AU - Henzinger, Thomas A AU - Singh, Vasu ID - 531 IS - 3 JF - Formal Methods in System Design TI - Verification of STM on relaxed memory models VL - 39 ER -