Execution Information Rate for Some Classes of Automata

Abstract. We study the Shannon information rate of accepting runs of various forms of automata. The rate is therefore a complexity indicator for executions of the automata. Accepting runs of finite automata and reversal-bounded nondeterministic counter machines, as well as their restrictions and variations, are investigated and are shown, in many cases, with computable execution rates. We also conduct experiments on C programs showing that estimating information rates for their executions is feasible in many cases.