59 research outputs found
Reachability for Two-Counter Machines with One Test and One Reset
We prove that the reachability relation of two-counter machines with one zero-test and one reset is Presburger-definable and effectively computable. Our proof is based on the introduction of two classes of Presburger-definable relations effectively stable by transitive closure. This approach generalizes and simplifies the existing different proofs and it solves an open problem introduced by Finkel and Sutre in 2000
Zone-based verification of timed automata: extrapolations, simulations and what next?
Timed automata have been introduced by Rajeev Alur and David Dill in the
early 90's. In the last decades, timed automata have become the de facto model
for the verification of real-time systems. Algorithms for timed automata are
based on the traversal of their state-space using zones as a symbolic
representation. Since the state-space is infinite, termination relies on finite
abstractions that yield a finite representation of the reachable states.
The first solution to get finite abstractions was based on extrapolations of
zones, and has been implemented in the industry-strength tool Uppaal. A
different approach based on simulations between zones has emerged in the last
ten years, and has been implemented in the fully open source tool TChecker. The
simulation-based approach has led to new efficient algorithms for reachability
and liveness in timed automata, and has also been extended to richer models
like weighted timed automata, and timed automata with diagonal constraints and
updates.
In this article, we survey the extrapolation and simulation techniques, and
discuss some open challenges for the future.Comment: Invited contribution at FORMATS'2
Minimising good-for-games automata is NP-complete
This paper discusses the hardness of finding minimal good-for-games (GFG) Büchi, Co-Büchi, and parity automata with state based acceptance. The problem appears to sit between finding small deterministic and finding small nondeterministic automata, where minimality is NP-complete and PSPACE-complete, respectively. However, recent work of Radi and Kupferman has shown that minimising Co-Büchi automata with transition based acceptance is tractable, which suggests that the complexity of minimising GFG automata might be cheaper than minimising deterministic automata. We show for the standard state based acceptance that the minimality of a GFG automaton is NP-complete for Büchi, Co-Büchi, and parity GFG automata. The proofs are a surprisingly straight forward generalisation of the proofs from deterministic Büchi automata: they use a similar reductions, and the same hard class of languages
Two-way automata and transducers with planar behaviours are aperiodic
We consider a notion of planarity for two-way finite automata and
transducers, inspired by Temperley-Lieb monoids of planar diagrams. We show
that this restriction captures star-free languages and first-order
transductions.Comment: 18 pages, DMTCS submissio
Probabilistic Bisimulation for Parameterized Systems (Technical Report)
Probabilistic bisimulation is a fundamental notion of process equivalence for probabilistic systems. Among others, it has important applications including formalizing the anonymity property of several communication protocols. There is a lot of work on verifying probabilistic bisimulation for finite systems. This is however not the case for parameterized systems, where the problem is in general undecidable. In this paper we provide a generic framework for reasoning about probabilistic bisimulation for parameterized systems. Our approach is in the spirit of software verification, wherein we encode proof rules for probabilistic bisimulation and use a decidable first-order theory to specify systems and candidate bisimulation relations, which can then be checked automatically against the proof rules. As a case study, we show that our framework is sufficiently expressive for proving the anonymity property of the parameterized dining cryptographers protocol and the parameterized grades protocol, when supplied with a candidate regular bisimulation relation. Both of these protocols hitherto could not be verified by existing automatic methods. Moreover, with the help of standard automata learning algorithms, we show that the candidate relations can be synthesized fully automatically, making the verification fully automated
Analyzing Timed Systems Using Tree Automata
Timed systems, such as timed automata, are usually analyzed using their
operational semantics on timed words. The classical region abstraction for
timed automata reduces them to (untimed) finite state automata with the same
time-abstract properties, such as state reachability. We propose a new
technique to analyze such timed systems using finite tree automata instead of
finite word automata. The main idea is to consider timed behaviors as graphs
with matching edges capturing timing constraints. When a family of graphs has
bounded tree-width, they can be interpreted in trees and MSO-definable
properties of such graphs can be checked using tree automata. The technique is
quite general and applies to many timed systems. In this paper, as an example,
we develop the technique on timed pushdown systems, which have recently
received considerable attention. Further, we also demonstrate how we can use it
on timed automata and timed multi-stack pushdown systems (with boundedness
restrictions)
The Impatient May Use Limited Optimism to Minimize Regret
Discounted-sum games provide a formal model for the study of reinforcement
learning, where the agent is enticed to get rewards early since later rewards
are discounted. When the agent interacts with the environment, she may regret
her actions, realizing that a previous choice was suboptimal given the behavior
of the environment. The main contribution of this paper is a PSPACE algorithm
for computing the minimum possible regret of a given game. To this end, several
results of independent interest are shown. (1) We identify a class of
regret-minimizing and admissible strategies that first assume that the
environment is collaborating, then assume it is adversarial---the precise
timing of the switch is key here. (2) Disregarding the computational cost of
numerical analysis, we provide an NP algorithm that checks that the regret
entailed by a given time-switching strategy exceeds a given value. (3) We show
that determining whether a strategy minimizes regret is decidable in PSPACE
Relational Symbolic Execution
Symbolic execution is a classical program analysis technique used to show
that programs satisfy or violate given specifications. In this work we
generalize symbolic execution to support program analysis for relational
specifications in the form of relational properties - these are properties
about two runs of two programs on related inputs, or about two executions of a
single program on related inputs. Relational properties are useful to formalize
notions in security and privacy, and to reason about program optimizations. We
design a relational symbolic execution engine, named RelSym which supports
interactive refutation, as well as proving of relational properties for
programs written in a language with arrays and for-like loops
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