On partial order semantics for SAT/SMT-based symbolic encodings of weak memory concurrency

Concurrent systems are notoriously difficult to analyze, and technological advances such as weak memory architectures greatly compound this problem. This has renewed interest in partial order semantics as a theoretical foundation for formal verification techniques. Among these, symbolic techniques have been shown to be particularly effective at finding concurrency-related bugs because they can leverage highly optimized decision procedures such as SAT/SMT solvers. This paper gives new fundamental results on partial order semantics for SAT/SMT-based symbolic encodings of weak memory concurrency. In particular, we give the theoretical basis for a decision procedure that can handle a fragment of concurrent programs endowed with least fixed point operators. In addition, we show that a certain partial order semantics of relaxed sequential consistency is equivalent to the conjunction of three extensively studied weak memory axioms by Alglave et al. An important consequence of this equivalence is an asymptotically smaller symbolic encoding for bounded model checking which has only a quadratic number of partial order constraints compared to the state-of-the-art cubic-size encoding.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figure

CCS with Hennessy's merge has no finite-equational axiomatization

Abstract This paper confirms a conjecture of Bergstra and Klop¿s from 1984 by establishing that the process algebra obtained by adding an auxiliary operator proposed by Hennessy in 1981 to the recursion free fragment of Milner¿s Calculus of Communicationg Systems is not finitely based modulo bisimulation equivalence. Thus Hennessy¿s merge cannot replace the left merge and communication merge operators proposed by Bergstra and Klop, at least if a finite axiomatization of parallel composition is desired. 2000 MATHEMATICS SUBJECT CLASSIFICATION: 08A70, 03B45, 03C05, 68Q10, 68Q45, 68Q55, 68Q70. CR SUBJECT CLASSIFICATION (1991): D.3.1, F.1.1, F.1.2, F.3.2, F.3.4, F.4.1. KEYWORDS AND PHRASES: Concurrency, process algebra, CCS, bisimulation, Hennessy¿s merge, left merge, communication merge, parallel composition, equational logic, complete axiomatizations, non-finitely based algebras

Axiomatizing the subsumption and subword preorders on finite and infinite partial words

AbstractWe consider two-sorted algebras of finite and infinite partial words equipped with the subsumption preorder and the operations of series and parallel product and omega power. It is shown that the valid equations and inequations of these algebras can be described by an infinite collection of simple axioms, and that no finite axiomatization exists. We also prove similar results for two related preorders, namely for the induced partial subword preorder and the partial subword preorder. Along the way of proving these results, we provide a concrete description of the free algebras in the corresponding varieties in terms of generalized series–parallel partial words