86,711 research outputs found
Designing type inference for typed object-oriented languages
Type-checked object-oriented languages have typically been designed with extremely simple type systems. However, there has recently been intense interest in extending such languages with more sophisticated types and subtyping relationships. JAVA and C# are mainstream languages that have been successfully extended with generic classes and methods; SCALA, FORTRESS, and X10 are new languages that adopt more advanced typing features, such as arrows, tuples, unions, intersections, dependent types, and existentials.
Presently, the type inference performed by these languages is unstable and evolving. This thesis explores problems arising in the design of a type inference specification for such languages.
We first present a formal description of subtyping in the context of a variety of advanced typing features. We then demonstrate how our formal subtyping algorithm can be easily re-expressed to produce a type inference algorithm, and observe that this algorithm is general enough to address a variety of important type-checking problems.
Finally, we apply this theory to a case study of the JAVA language's type system. We express JAVA'S types and inference algorithm in terms of our formal theory and note a variety of opportunities for improvement. We then describe the results of applying an improved type inference implementation to a selection of existing JAVA code, noting that, without introducing significant backwards-incompatibility problems for these programs, we've managed to significantly reduce the need for annotated method invocations
Formal development of a clock synchronization circuit
This talk presents the latest stage in formal development of a fault-tolerant clock synchronization circuit. The development spans from a high level specification of the required properties to a circuit realizing the core function of the system. An abstract description of an algorithm has been verified to satisfy the high-level properties using the mechanical verification system EHDM. This abstract description is recast as a behavioral specification input to the Digital Design Derivation system (DDD) developed at Indiana University. DDD provides a formal design algebra for developing correct digital hardware. Using DDD as the principle design environment, a core circuit implementing the clock synchronization algorithm was developed. The design process consisted of standard DDD transformations augmented with an ad hoc refinement justified using the Prototype Verification System (PVS) from SRI International. Subsequent to the above development, Wilfredo Torres-Pomales discovered an area-efficient realization of the same function. Establishing correctness of this optimization requires reasoning in arithmetic, so a general verification is outside the domain of both DDD transformations and model-checking techniques. DDD represents digital hardware by systems of mutually recursive stream equations. A collection of PVS theories was developed to aid in reasoning about DDD-style streams. These theories include a combinator for defining streams that satisfy stream equations, and a means for proving stream equivalence by exhibiting a stream bisimulation. DDD was used to isolate the sub-system involved in Torres-Pomales' optimization. The equivalence between the original design and the optimized verified was verified in PVS by exhibiting a suitable bisimulation. The verification depended upon type constraints on the input streams and made extensive use of the PVS type system. The dependent types in PVS provided a useful mechanism for defining an appropriate bisimulation
On the Verification of a WiMax Design Using Symbolic Simulation
In top-down multi-level design methodologies, design descriptions at higher
levels of abstraction are incrementally refined to the final realizations.
Simulation based techniques have traditionally been used to verify that such
model refinements do not change the design functionality. Unfortunately, with
computer simulations it is not possible to completely check that a design
transformation is correct in a reasonable amount of time, as the number of test
patterns required to do so increase exponentially with the number of system
state variables. In this paper, we propose a methodology for the verification
of conformance of models generated at higher levels of abstraction in the
design process to the design specifications. We model the system behavior using
sequence of recurrence equations. We then use symbolic simulation together with
equivalence checking and property checking techniques for design verification.
Using our proposed method, we have verified the equivalence of three WiMax
system models at different levels of design abstraction, and the correctness of
various system properties on those models. Our symbolic modeling and
verification experiments show that the proposed verification methodology
provides performance advantage over its numerical counterpart.Comment: In Proceedings SCSS 2012, arXiv:1307.802
A Modular Toolkit for Distributed Interactions
We discuss the design, architecture, and implementation of a toolkit which
supports some theories for distributed interactions. The main design principles
of our architecture are flexibility and modularity. Our main goal is to provide
an easily extensible workbench to encompass current algorithms and incorporate
future developments of the theories. With the help of some examples, we
illustrate the main features of our toolkit.Comment: In Proceedings PLACES 2010, arXiv:1110.385
Synthesis of Parametric Programs using Genetic Programming and Model Checking
Formal methods apply algorithms based on mathematical principles to enhance
the reliability of systems. It would only be natural to try to progress from
verification, model checking or testing a system against its formal
specification into constructing it automatically. Classical algorithmic
synthesis theory provides interesting algorithms but also alarming high
complexity and undecidability results. The use of genetic programming, in
combination with model checking and testing, provides a powerful heuristic to
synthesize programs. The method is not completely automatic, as it is fine
tuned by a user that sets up the specification and parameters. It also does not
guarantee to always succeed and converge towards a solution that satisfies all
the required properties. However, we applied it successfully on quite
nontrivial examples and managed to find solutions to hard programming
challenges, as well as to improve and to correct code. We describe here several
versions of our method for synthesizing sequential and concurrent systems.Comment: In Proceedings INFINITY 2013, arXiv:1402.661
Cross-entropy optimisation of importance sampling parameters for statistical model checking
Statistical model checking avoids the exponential growth of states associated
with probabilistic model checking by estimating properties from multiple
executions of a system and by giving results within confidence bounds. Rare
properties are often very important but pose a particular challenge for
simulation-based approaches, hence a key objective under these circumstances is
to reduce the number and length of simulations necessary to produce a given
level of confidence. Importance sampling is a well-established technique that
achieves this, however to maintain the advantages of statistical model checking
it is necessary to find good importance sampling distributions without
considering the entire state space.
Motivated by the above, we present a simple algorithm that uses the notion of
cross-entropy to find the optimal parameters for an importance sampling
distribution. In contrast to previous work, our algorithm uses a low
dimensional vector of parameters to define this distribution and thus avoids
the often intractable explicit representation of a transition matrix. We show
that our parametrisation leads to a unique optimum and can produce many orders
of magnitude improvement in simulation efficiency. We demonstrate the efficacy
of our methodology by applying it to models from reliability engineering and
biochemistry.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures, LNCS styl
Towards Realizability Checking of Contracts using Theories
Virtual integration techniques focus on building architectural models of
systems that can be analyzed early in the design cycle to try to lower cost,
reduce risk, and improve quality of complex embedded systems. Given appropriate
architectural descriptions and compositional reasoning rules, these techniques
can be used to prove important safety properties about the architecture prior
to system construction. Such proofs build from "leaf-level" assume/guarantee
component contracts through architectural layers towards top-level safety
properties. The proofs are built upon the premise that each leaf-level
component contract is realizable; i.e., it is possible to construct a component
such that for any input allowed by the contract assumptions, there is some
output value that the component can produce that satisfies the contract
guarantees. Without engineering support it is all too easy to write leaf-level
components that can't be realized. Realizability checking for propositional
contracts has been well-studied for many years, both for component synthesis
and checking correctness of temporal logic requirements. However, checking
realizability for contracts involving infinite theories is still an open
problem. In this paper, we describe a new approach for checking realizability
of contracts involving theories and demonstrate its usefulness on several
examples.Comment: 15 pages, to appear in NASA Formal Methods (NFM) 201
Metamodel-based model conformance and multiview consistency checking
Model-driven development, using languages such as UML and BON, often makes use of multiple diagrams (e.g., class and sequence diagrams) when modeling systems. These diagrams, presenting different views of a system of interest, may be inconsistent. A metamodel provides a unifying framework in which to ensure and check consistency, while at the same time providing the means to distinguish between valid and invalid models, that is, conformance. Two formal specifications of the metamodel for an object-oriented modeling language are presented, and it is shown how to use these specifications for model conformance and multiview consistency checking. Comparisons are made in terms of completeness and the level of automation each provide for checking multiview consistency and model conformance. The lessons learned from applying formal techniques to the problems of metamodeling, model conformance, and multiview consistency checking are summarized
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