Correctness of an STM Haskell implementation

A concurrent implementation of software transactional memory in Concurrent Haskell using a call-by-need functional language with processes and futures is given. The description of the small-step operational semantics is precise and explicit, and employs an early abort of conflicting transactions. A proof of correctness of the implementation is given for a contextual semantics with may- and should-convergence. This implies that our implementation is a correct evaluator for an abstract specification equipped with a big-step semantics

Contextual Equivalences in Call-by-Need and Call-By-Name Polymorphically Typed Calculi (Preliminary Report)

This paper presents a call-by-need polymorphically typed lambda-calculus with letrec, case, constructors and seq. The typing of the calculus is modelled in a system-F style. Contextual equivalence is used as semantics of expressions. We also define a call-by-name variant without letrec. We adapt several tools and criteria for recognizing correct program transformations to polymorphic typing, in particular an inductive applicative simulation

Structural Rewriting in the pi-Calculus

We consider reduction in the synchronous pi-calculus with replication, without sums. Usual definitions of reduction in the pi-calculus use a closure w.r.t. structural congruence of processes. In this paper we operationalize structural congruence by providing a reduction relation for pi-processes which also performs necessary structural conversions explicitly by rewrite rules. As we show, a subset of structural congruence axioms is sufficient. We show that our rewrite strategy is equivalent to the usual strategy including structural congruence w.r.t.the observation of barbs and thus w.r.t. may- and should-testing equivalence in the pi-calculus

Observing Success in the Pi-Calculus

A contextual semantics - defined in terms of successful termination and may- and should-convergence - is analyzed in the synchronous pi-calculus with replication and a constant Stop to denote success. The contextual ordering is analyzed, some nontrivial process equivalences are proved, and proof tools for showing contextual equivalences are provided. Among them are a context lemma and new notions of sound applicative similarities for may- and should-convergence. A further result is that contextual equivalence in the pi-calculus with Stop conservatively extends barbed testing equivalence in the (Stop-free) pi-calculus and thus results on contextual equivalence can be transferred to the (Stop-free) pi-calculus with barbed testing equivalence

Simulation in the Call-by-Need Lambda-Calculus with Letrec, Case, Constructors, and Seq

This paper shows equivalence of several versions of applicative similarity and contextual approximation, and hence also of applicative bisimilarity and contextual equivalence, in LR, the deterministic call-by-need lambda calculus with letrec extended by data constructors, case-expressions and Haskell's seq-operator. LR models an untyped version of the core language of Haskell. The use of bisimilarities simplifies equivalence proofs in calculi and opens a way for more convenient correctness proofs for program transformations. The proof is by a fully abstract and surjective transfer into a call-by-name calculus, which is an extension of Abramsky's lazy lambda calculus. In the latter calculus equivalence of our similarities and contextual approximation can be shown by Howe's method. Similarity is transferred back to LR on the basis of an inductively defined similarity. The translation from the call-by-need letrec calculus into the extended call-by-name lambda calculus is the composition of two translations. The first translation replaces the call-by-need strategy by a call-by-name strategy and its correctness is shown by exploiting infinite trees which emerge by unfolding the letrec expressions. The second translation encodes letrec-expressions by using multi-fixpoint combinators and its correctness is shown syntactically by comparing reductions of both calculi. A further result of this paper is an isomorphism between the mentioned calculi, which is also an identity on letrec-free expressions.Comment: 50 pages, 11 figure

Attractor Equivalence: An Observational Semantics for Reaction Networks

International audienceWe study observational semantics for networks of chemical reactions as used in systems biology. Reaction networks without kinetic information, as we consider, can be identified with Petri nets. We present a new observational semantics for reaction networks that we call the attractor equivalence. The main idea of the attractor equivalence is to observe reachable attractors and reachability of an attractor divergence in all possible contexts. The attractor equivalence can support powerful simplifications for reaction networks as we illustrate at the example of the Tet-On system. Alternative semantics based on bisimulations or traces, in contrast, do not support all needed simplifications