1,105 research outputs found
Model checking Branching-Time Properties of Multi-Pushdown Systems is Hard
We address the model checking problem for shared memory concurrent programs
modeled as multi-pushdown systems. We consider here boolean programs with a
finite number of threads and recursive procedures. It is well-known that the
model checking problem is undecidable for this class of programs. In this
paper, we investigate the decidability and the complexity of this problem under
the assumption of bounded context-switching defined by Qadeer and Rehof, and of
phase-boundedness proposed by La Torre et al. On the model checking of such
systems against temporal logics and in particular branching time logics such as
the modal -calculus or CTL has received little attention. It is known that
parity games, which are closely related to the modal -calculus, are
decidable for the class of bounded-phase systems (and hence for bounded-context
switching as well), but with non-elementary complexity (Seth). A natural
question is whether this high complexity is inevitable and what are the ways to
get around it. This paper addresses these questions and unfortunately, and
somewhat surprisingly, it shows that branching model checking for MPDSs is
inherently an hard problem with no easy solution. We show that parity games on
MPDS under phase-bounding restriction is non-elementary. Our main result shows
that model checking a context bounded MPDS against a simple fragment of
CTL, consisting of formulas that whose temporal operators come from the set
{\EF, \EX}, has a non-elementary lower bound
Unified Analysis of Collapsible and Ordered Pushdown Automata via Term Rewriting
We model collapsible and ordered pushdown systems with term rewriting, by
encoding higher-order stacks and multiple stacks into trees. We show a uniform
inverse preservation of recognizability result for the resulting class of term
rewriting systems, which is obtained by extending the classic saturation-based
approach. This result subsumes and unifies similar analyses on collapsible and
ordered pushdown systems. Despite the rich literature on inverse preservation
of recognizability for term rewrite systems, our result does not seem to follow
from any previous study.Comment: in Proc. of FRE
Model-Checking of Ordered Multi-Pushdown Automata
We address the verification problem of ordered multi-pushdown automata: A
multi-stack extension of pushdown automata that comes with a constraint on
stack transitions such that a pop can only be performed on the first non-empty
stack. First, we show that the emptiness problem for ordered multi-pushdown
automata is in 2ETIME. Then, we prove that, for an ordered multi-pushdown
automata, the set of all predecessors of a regular set of configurations is an
effectively constructible regular set. We exploit this result to solve the
global model-checking which consists in computing the set of all configurations
of an ordered multi-pushdown automaton that satisfy a given w-regular property
(expressible in linear-time temporal logics or the linear-time \mu-calculus).
As an immediate consequence, we obtain an 2ETIME upper bound for the
model-checking problem of w-regular properties for ordered multi-pushdown
automata (matching its lower-bound).Comment: 31 page
A Perfect Model for Bounded Verification
A class of languages C is perfect if it is closed under Boolean operations
and the emptiness problem is decidable. Perfect language classes are the basis
for the automata-theoretic approach to model checking: a system is correct if
the language generated by the system is disjoint from the language of bad
traces. Regular languages are perfect, but because the disjointness problem for
CFLs is undecidable, no class containing the CFLs can be perfect.
In practice, verification problems for language classes that are not perfect
are often under-approximated by checking if the property holds for all
behaviors of the system belonging to a fixed subset. A general way to specify a
subset of behaviors is by using bounded languages (languages of the form w1*
... wk* for fixed words w1,...,wk). A class of languages C is perfect modulo
bounded languages if it is closed under Boolean operations relative to every
bounded language, and if the emptiness problem is decidable relative to every
bounded language.
We consider finding perfect classes of languages modulo bounded languages. We
show that the class of languages accepted by multi-head pushdown automata are
perfect modulo bounded languages, and characterize the complexities of decision
problems. We also show that bounded languages form a maximal class for which
perfection is obtained. We show that computations of several known models of
systems, such as recursive multi-threaded programs, recursive counter machines,
and communicating finite-state machines can be encoded as multi-head pushdown
automata, giving uniform and optimal underapproximation algorithms modulo
bounded languages.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figure
Reachability Analysis of Communicating Pushdown Systems
The reachability analysis of recursive programs that communicate
asynchronously over reliable FIFO channels calls for restrictions to ensure
decidability. Our first result characterizes communication topologies with a
decidable reachability problem restricted to eager runs (i.e., runs where
messages are either received immediately after being sent, or never received).
The problem is EXPTIME-complete in the decidable case. The second result is a
doubly exponential time algorithm for bounded context analysis in this setting,
together with a matching lower bound. Both results extend and improve previous
work from La Torre et al
Revisiting Underapproximate Reachability for Multipushdown Systems
Boolean programs with multiple recursive threads can be captured as pushdown
automata with multiple stacks. This model is Turing complete, and hence, one is
often interested in analyzing a restricted class that still captures useful
behaviors. In this paper, we propose a new class of bounded under
approximations for multi-pushdown systems, which subsumes most existing
classes. We develop an efficient algorithm for solving the under-approximate
reachability problem, which is based on efficient fix-point computations. We
implement it in our tool BHIM and illustrate its applicability by generating a
set of relevant benchmarks and examining its performance. As an additional
takeaway, BHIM solves the binary reachability problem in pushdown automata. To
show the versatility of our approach, we then extend our algorithm to the timed
setting and provide the first implementation that can handle timed
multi-pushdown automata with closed guards.Comment: 52 pages, Conference TACAS 202
Scope-bounded multistack pushdown systems: fixed-point, sequentialization, and tree-width
We present a novel fixed-point algorithm to solve reachability of multi-stack pushdown systems restricted to runs of bounded-scope. The followed approach is compositional, in the sense that the runs of the system are summarized by bounded-size interfaces. Moreover, it is suitable for a direct implementation and can be exploited to prove two new results. We give a sequentialization for this class of systems, i.e., for each such multi-stack pushdown system we construct an equivalent single-stack pushdown system that faithfully simulates the behaviour of each thread. We prove that the behaviour graphs (multiply nested words) for these systems have bounded three-width, and thus a number of decidability results can be derived from Courcelleās theorem
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