Complexity Bounds for Ordinal-Based Termination

`What more than its truth do we know if we have a proof of a theorem in a given formal system?' We examine Kreisel's question in the particular context of program termination proofs, with an eye to deriving complexity bounds on program running times. Our main tool for this are length function theorems, which provide complexity bounds on the use of well quasi orders. We illustrate how to prove such theorems in the simple yet until now untreated case of ordinals. We show how to apply this new theorem to derive complexity bounds on programs when they are proven to terminate thanks to a ranking function into some ordinal.Comment: Invited talk at the 8th International Workshop on Reachability Problems (RP 2014, 22-24 September 2014, Oxford

Reachability in Vector Addition Systems is Primitive-Recursive in Fixed Dimension

The reachability problem in vector addition systems is a central question, not only for the static verification of these systems, but also for many inter-reducible decision problems occurring in various fields. The currently best known upper bound on this problem is not primitive-recursive, even when considering systems of fixed dimension. We provide significant refinements to the classical decomposition algorithm of Mayr, Kosaraju, and Lambert and to its termination proof, which yield an ACKERMANN upper bound in the general case, and primitive-recursive upper bounds in fixed dimension. While this does not match the currently best known TOWER lower bound for reachability, it is optimal for related problems

Complexity of Coverability in Bounded Path Broadcast Networks

Broadcast networks are a formalism of distributed computation that allow one to model networks of identical nodes communicating through message broadcasts over a communication topology that does not change over the course of executions. The parameterized verification problem for these networks amounts to proving correctness of a property for any number of nodes, and on all executions. Dually speaking, this problem asks for the existence of an execution of the broadcast network that violates a given property. One specific instance of parameterized verification is the coverability problem which asks whether there is an execution of the network in which some node reaches a given state of the broadcast protocol. This problem was proven to be undecidable by Delzanno, Sangnier and Zavattaro (CONCUR 2010). In the same paper, the authors also prove that, if we additionally assume that the underlying communication topology has a bound on the longest path, then the coverability problem becomes decidable. In this paper, we provide complexity results for the above problem and prove that the coverability problem for bounded-path topologies is ?_??-complete, where ?_?? is a class in the fast-growing hierarchy of complexity classes. This solves an open problem of Hasse, Schmitz and Schnoebelen (LMCS, Vol 10, Issue 4)

Bisimulation Equivalence of First-Order Grammars is ACKERMANN-Complete

Checking whether two pushdown automata with restricted silent actions are weakly bisimilar was shown decidable by S\'enizergues (1998, 2005). We provide the first known complexity upper bound for this famous problem, in the equivalent setting of first-order grammars. This ACKERMANN upper bound is optimal, and we also show that strong bisimilarity is primitive-recursive when the number of states of the automata is fixed

Complexity of Coverability in Depth-Bounded Processes

We consider the class of depth-bounded processes in ?-calculus. These processes are the most expressive fragment of ?-calculus, for which verification problems are known to be decidable. The decidability of the coverability problem for this class has been achieved by means of well-quasi orders. (Meyer, IFIP TCS 2008; Wies, Zufferey and Henzinger, FoSSaCS 2010). However, the precise complexity of this problem has not been known so far, with only a known EXPSPACE-lower bound. In this paper, we prove that coverability for depth-bounded processes is ?_??-complete, where ?_?? is a class in the fast-growing hierarchy of complexity classes. This solves an open problem mentioned by Haase, Schmitz, and Schnoebelen (LMCS, Vol 10, Issue 4) and also addresses a question raised by Wies, Zufferey and Henzinger (FoSSaCS 2010)

Automata Column: The Complexity of Reachability in Vector Addition Systems

International audienceThe program of the 30th Symposium on Logic in Computer Science held in 2015 in Kyoto included two contributions on the computational complexity of the reachability problem for vector addition systems: Blondin, Finkel, Göller, Haase, and McKenzie [2015] attacked the problem by providing the first tight complexity bounds in the case of dimension 2 systems with states, while Leroux and Schmitz [2015] proved the first complexity upper bound in the general case. The purpose of this column is to present the main ideas behind these two results, and more generally survey the current state of affairs