Higher-order linearisability

Linearisability is a central notion for verifying concurrent libraries: a library is proven correct if its operational history can be rearranged into a sequential one that satisfies a given specification. Until now, linearisability has been examined for libraries in which method arguments and method results were of ground type. In this paper we extend linearisability to the general higher-order setting, where methods of arbitrary type can be passed as arguments and returned as values, and establish its soundness

Higher-Order Linearisability

Linearisability is a central notion for verifying concurrent libraries: a library is proven correct if its operational history can be rearranged into a sequential one that satisfies a given specification. Until now, linearisability has been examined for libraries in which method arguments and method results were of ground type. In this paper we extend linearisability to the general higher-order setting, where methods of arbitrary type can be passed as arguments and returned as values, and establish its soundness

Steps in modular specifications for concurrent modules

© 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.The specification of a concurrent program module is a difficult problem. The specifications must be strong enough to enable reasoning about the intended clients without reference to the underlying module implementation. We survey a range of verification techniques for specifying concurrent modules, in particular highlighting four key concepts: auxiliary state, interference abstraction, resource ownership and atomicity. We show how these concepts combine to provide powerful approaches to specifying concurrent modules

On the integrability of symplectic Monge-Amp\'ere equations

Let u be a function of n independent variables x^1, ..., x^n, and U=(u_{ij}) the Hessian matrix of u. The symplectic Monge-Ampere equation is defined as a linear relation among all possible minors of U. Particular examples include the equation det U=1 governing improper affine spheres and the so-called heavenly equation, u_{13}u_{24}-u_{23}u_{14}=1, describing self-dual Ricci-flat 4-manifolds. In this paper we classify integrable symplectic Monge-Ampere equations in four dimensions (for n=3 the integrability of such equations is known to be equivalent to their linearisability). This problem can be reformulated geometrically as the classification of 'maximally singular' hyperplane sections of the Plucker embedding of the Lagrangian Grassmannian. We formulate a conjecture that any integrable equation of the form F(u_{ij})=0 in more than three dimensions is necessarily of the symplectic Monge-Ampere type.Comment: 20 pages; added more details of proof

On a class of integrable systems of Monge-Amp\`ere type

We investigate a class of multi-dimensional two-component systems of Monge-Amp\`ere type that can be viewed as generalisations of heavenly-type equations appearing in self-dual Ricci-flat geometry. Based on the Jordan-Kronecker theory of skew-symmetric matrix pencils, a classification of normal forms of such systems is obtained. All two-component systems of Monge-Amp\`ere type turn out to be integrable, and can be represented as the commutativity conditions of parameter-dependent vector fields. Geometrically, systems of Monge-Amp\`ere type are associated with linear sections of the Grassmannians. This leads to an invariant differential-geometric characterisation of the Monge-Amp\`ere property.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1503.0227

Straightening warped cones

We provide the converses to two results of J. Roe (Geom. Topol. 2005): first, the warped cone associated to a free action of an a-T-menable group admits a fibred coarse embedding into a Hilbert space, and second, a free action yielding a warped cone with property A must be amenable. We construct examples showing that in both cases the freeness assumption is necessary. The first equivalence is obtained also for other classes of Banach spaces, in particular for $L^p$-spaces.Comment: Final authors' version of the article published by JTA. Changes since v2: the proof of Lem. 3.8 (now Prop. 3.10) is split between several lemmata, the proof of Thm 4.2 simplified and more detaile

On library correctness under weak memory consistency: specifying and verifying concurrent libraries under declarative consistency models

Concurrent libraries are the building blocks for concurrency. They encompass a range of abstractions (locks, exchangers, stacks, queues, sets) built in a layered fashion: more advanced libraries are built out of simpler ones. While there has been a lot of work on verifying such libraries in a sequentially consistent (SC) environment, little is known about how to specify and verify them under weak memory consistency (WMC). We propose a general declarative framework that allows us to specify concurrent libraries declaratively, and to verify library implementations against their specifications compositionally. Our framework is sufficient to encode standard models such as SC, (R)C11 and TSO. Additionally, we specify several concurrent libraries, including mutual exclusion locks, reader-writer locks, exchangers, queues, stacks and sets. We then use our framework to verify multiple weakly consistent implementations of locks, exchangers, queues and stacks