ConDRust: Scalable Deterministic Concurrency from Verifiable Rust Programs (Artifact)

SAT/SMT-solvers and model checkers automate formal verification of sequential programs. Formal reasoning about scalable concurrent programs is still manual and requires expert knowledge. But scalability is a fundamental requirement of current and future programs. Sequential imperative programs compose statements, function/method calls and control flow constructs. Concurrent programming models provide constructs for concurrent composition. Concurrency abstractions such as threads and synchronization primitives such as locks compose the individual parts of a concurrent program that are meant to execute in parallel. We propose to rather compose the individual parts again using sequential composition and compile this sequential composition into a concurrent one. The developer can use existing tools to formally verify the sequential program while the translated concurrent program provides the dearly requested scalability. Following this insight, we present ConDRust, a new programming model and compiler for Rust programs. The ConDRust compiler translates sequential composition into a concurrent composition based on threads and message-passing channels. During compilation, the compiler preserves the semantics of the sequential program along with much desired properties such as determinism. Our evaluation shows that our ConDRust compiler generates concurrent deterministic code that can outperform even non-deterministic programs by up to a factor of three for irregular algorithms that are particularly hard to parallelize

ConDRust: Scalable Deterministic Concurrency from Verifiable Rust Programs

SAT/SMT-solvers and model checkers automate formal verification of sequential programs. Formal reasoning about scalable concurrent programs is still manual and requires expert knowledge. But scalability is a fundamental requirement of current and future programs. Sequential imperative programs compose statements, function/method calls and control flow constructs. Concurrent programming models provide constructs for concurrent composition. Concurrency abstractions such as threads and synchronization primitives such as locks compose the individual parts of a concurrent program that are meant to execute in parallel. We propose to rather compose the individual parts again using sequential composition and compile this sequential composition into a concurrent one. The developer can use existing tools to formally verify the sequential program while the translated concurrent program provides the dearly requested scalability. Following this insight, we present ConDRust, a new programming model and compiler for Rust programs. The ConDRust compiler translates sequential composition into a concurrent composition based on threads and message-passing channels. During compilation, the compiler preserves the semantics of the sequential program along with much desired properties such as determinism. Our evaluation shows that our ConDRust compiler generates concurrent deterministic code that can outperform even non-deterministic programs by up to a factor of three for irregular algorithms that are particularly hard to parallelize

The Boolean Algebra of Cubical Areas as a Tensor Product in the Category of Semilattices with Zero

In this paper we describe a model of concurrency together with an algebraic structure reflecting the parallel composition. For the sake of simplicity we restrict to linear concurrent programs i.e. the ones with no loops nor branching. Such programs are given a semantics using cubical areas. Such a semantics is said to be geometric. The collection of all these cubical areas enjoys a structure of tensor product in the category of semi-lattice with zero. These results naturally extend to fully fledged concurrent programs up to some technical tricks.Comment: In Proceedings ICE 2014, arXiv:1410.701

A component-based model and language for wireless sensor network applications

Wireless sensor networks are often used by experts in many different fields to gather data pertinent to their work. Although their expertise may not include software engineering, these users are expected to produce low-level software for a concurrent, real-time and resource-constrained computing environment. In this paper, we introduce a component-based model for wireless sensor network applications and a language, Insense, for supporting the model. An application is modelled as a composition of interacting components and the application model is preserved in the Insense implementation where active components communicate via typed channels. The primary design criteria for Insense include: to abstract over low-level concerns for ease of programming; to permit worst-case space and time usage of programs to be determinable; to support the fractal composition of components whilst eliminating implicit dependencies between them; and, to facilitate the construction of low footprint programs suitable for resource-constrained devices. This paper presents an overview of the component model and Insense, and demonstrates how they meet the above criteria.Preprin

Dual Enrollment between High Schools and a Metropolitan University

Concurrent/dual enrollment programs at postsecondary educational institutions have rapidly proliferated across the country during the last several years with wide variations in the structure and composition of such programs. Having recently completed a pilot phase of its first dual enrollment program, the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) has enjoyed great success due to a relatively unique partnership formed between the university and Omaha area school districts

Automated verification of reactive and concurrent programs by calculation

Reactive programs combine traditional sequential programming constructs with primitives to allow communication with other concurrent agents. They are ubiquitous in modern applications, ranging from components systems and web services, to cyber-physical systems and autonomous robots. In this paper, we present an algebraic verification strategy for concurrent reactive programs, with a large or infinite state space. We define novel operators to characterise interactions and state updates, and an associated equational theory. With this we can calculate a reactive program's denotational semantics, and thereby facilitate automated proof. Of note is our reasoning support for iterative programs with reactive invariants, based on Kleene algebra, and for parallel composition. We illustrate our strategy by verifying a reactive buffer. Our laws and strategy are mechanised in Isabelle/UTP, our implementation of Hoare and He's Unifying Theories of Programming (UTP) framework, to provide soundness guarantees and practical verification support