Goal-Driven Unfolding of Petri Nets

Unfoldings provide an efficient way to avoid the state-space explosion due to interleavings of concurrent transitions when exploring the runs of a Petri net. The theory of adequate orders allows one to define finite prefixes of unfoldings which contain all the reachable markings. In this paper we are interested in reachability of a single given marking, called the goal. We propose an algorithm for computing a finite prefix of the unfolding of a 1-safe Petri net that preserves all minimal configurations reaching this goal. Our algorithm combines the unfolding technique with on-the-fly model reduction by static analysis aiming at avoiding the exploration of branches which are not needed for reaching the goal. We present some experimental results

On the Semantics of Petri Nets: Processes, Unfoldings and Infinite Computations.

PhD Thesi

Symbolic performance analysis of elastic systems

Elastic systems, either synchronous or asynchronous, can be optimized for the average-case performance when they have units with early evaluation or variable latency. The performance evaluation of such systems using analytical methods is a complex problem and may become a bottleneck when an extensive exploration of different architectural configurations must be done. This paper proposes an analytical method for performance evaluation using symbolic expressions. Two version of the method are presented: an exact method that has high run time complexity and an efficient approximate method that computes the lower bound of the system throughput.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Synthesis of asynchronous distributed systems from global specifications

The synthesis problem asks whether there exists an implementation for a given formal specification and derives such an implementation if it exists. This approach enables engineers to think on a more abstract level about what a system should achieve instead of how it should accomplish its goal. The synthesis problem is often represented by a game between system players and environment players. Petri games define the synthesis problem for asynchronous distributed systems with causal memory. So far, decidability results for Petri games are mainly obtained for local winning conditions, which is limiting as global properties like mutual exclusion cannot be expressed. In this thesis, we make two contributions. First, we present decidability and undecidability results for Petri games with global winning conditions. The global safety winning condition of bad markings defines markings that the players have to avoid. We prove that the existence of a winning strategy for the system players in Petri games with a bounded number of system players, at most one environment player, and bad markings is decidable. The global liveness winning condition of good markings defines markings that the players have to reach. We prove that the existence of a winning strategy for the system players in Petri games with at least two system players, at least three environment players, and good markings is undecidable. Second, we present semi-decision procedures to find winning strategies for the system players in Petri games with global winning conditions and without restrictions on the distribution of players. The distributed nature of Petri games is employed by proposing encodings with true concurrency. We implement the semi-decision procedures in a corresponding tool.Das Syntheseproblem stellt die Frage, ob eine Implementierung f ¨ur eine Spezifikation existiert, und generiert eine solche Implementierung, falls sie existiert. Diese Vorgehensweise erlaubt es Programmierenden sich mehr darauf zu konzentrieren, was ein System erreichen soll, und weniger darauf, wie die Spezifikation erf ¨ ullt werden soll. Das Syntheseproblem wird oft als Spiel zwischen einem System- und einem Umgebungsspieler dargestellt. Petri-Spiele definieren das Syntheseproblem f ¨ur asynchrone verteilte Systeme mit kausalem Speicher. Bisher wurden Resultate bez¨uglich der Entscheidbarkeit von Petri-Spiele meist f ¨ur lokale Gewinnbedingungen gefunden. In dieser Arbeit pr¨asentieren wir zuerst Resultate bez¨uglich der Entscheidbarkeit und Unentscheidbarkeit von Petri-Spielen mit globalen Gewinnbedingungen. Wir beweisen, dass die Existenz einer gewinnenden Strategie f ¨ur die Systemspieler in Petri- Spielen mit einer beschr¨ankten Anzahl an Systemspielern, h¨ochstens einem Umgebungsspieler und schlechten Markierungen entscheidbar ist. Wir beweisen ebenfalls, dass die Existenz einer gewinnenden Strategie f ¨ur die Systemspieler in Petri-Spielen mit mindestens zwei Systemspielern, mindestens drei Umgebungsspielern und guten Markierungen unentscheidbar ist. Danach pr¨asentieren wir Semi-Entscheidungsprozeduren, um gewinnende Strategien f ¨ur die Systemspieler in Petri-Spielen mit globalen Gewinnbedingungen und ohne Restriktionen f ¨ur die Verteilung von Spielern zu finden. Wir benutzen die verteilte Natur von Petri-Spielen, indem wir Enkodierungen einf ¨uhren, die Nebenl¨aufigkeit ausnutzen. Die Semi-Entscheidungsprozeduren sind in einem entsprechenden Tool implementiert

A Polynomial Translation of pi-calculus FCPs to Safe Petri Nets

We develop a polynomial translation from finite control pi-calculus processes to safe low-level Petri nets. To our knowledge, this is the first such translation. It is natural in that there is a close correspondence between the control flows, enjoys a bisimulation result, and is suitable for practical model checking.Comment: To appear in special issue on best papers of CONCUR'12 of Logical Methods in Computer Scienc

Processes and unfoldings: concurrent computations in adhesive categories

We generalise both the notion of non-sequential process and the unfolding construction (previously developed for concrete formalisms such as Petri nets and graph grammars) to the abstract setting of (single pushout) rewriting of objects in adhesive categories. The main results show that processes are in one-to-one correspondence with switch-equivalent classes of derivations, and that the unfolding construction can be characterised as a coreflection, i.e., the unfolding functor arises as the right adjoint to the embedding of the category of occurrence grammars into the category of grammars. As the unfolding represents potentially infinite computations, we need to work in adhesive categories with "well-behaved" colimits of omega-chains of monos. Compared to previous work on the unfolding of Petri nets and graph grammars, our results apply to a wider class of systems, which is due to the use of a refined notion of grammar morphism