7,147 research outputs found
Comparing the expressive power of the Synchronous and the Asynchronous pi-calculus
The Asynchronous pi-calculus, as recently proposed by Boudol and,
independently, by Honda and Tokoro, is a subset of the pi-calculus which
contains no explicit operators for choice and output-prefixing. The
communication mechanism of this calculus, however, is powerful enough to
simulate output-prefixing, as shown by Boudol, and input-guarded choice, as
shown recently by Nestmann and Pierce. A natural question arises, then, whether
or not it is possible to embed in it the full pi-calculus. We show that this is
not possible, i.e. there does not exist any uniform, parallel-preserving,
translation from the pi-calculus into the asynchronous pi-calculus, up to any
``reasonable'' notion of equivalence. This result is based on the incapablity
of the asynchronous pi-calculus of breaking certain symmetries possibly present
in the initial communication graph. By similar arguments, we prove a separation
result between the pi-calculus and CCS.Comment: 10 pages. Proc. of the POPL'97 symposiu
The Spectrum of Strong Behavioral Equivalences for Nondeterministic and Probabilistic Processes
We present a spectrum of trace-based, testing, and bisimulation equivalences
for nondeterministic and probabilistic processes whose activities are all
observable. For every equivalence under study, we examine the discriminating
power of three variants stemming from three approaches that differ for the way
probabilities of events are compared when nondeterministic choices are resolved
via deterministic schedulers. We show that the first approach - which compares
two resolutions relatively to the probability distributions of all considered
events - results in a fragment of the spectrum compatible with the spectrum of
behavioral equivalences for fully probabilistic processes. In contrast, the
second approach - which compares the probabilities of the events of a
resolution with the probabilities of the same events in possibly different
resolutions - gives rise to another fragment composed of coarser equivalences
that exhibits several analogies with the spectrum of behavioral equivalences
for fully nondeterministic processes. Finally, the third approach - which only
compares the extremal probabilities of each event stemming from the different
resolutions - yields even coarser equivalences that, however, give rise to a
hierarchy similar to that stemming from the second approach.Comment: In Proceedings QAPL 2013, arXiv:1306.241
Explicit fairness in testing semantics
In this paper we investigate fair computations in the pi-calculus. Following
Costa and Stirling's approach for CCS-like languages, we consider a method to
label process actions in order to filter out unfair computations. We contrast
the existing fair-testing notion with those that naturally arise by imposing
weak and strong fairness. This comparison provides insight about the
expressiveness of the various `fair' testing semantics and about their
discriminating power.Comment: 27 pages, 1 figure, appeared in LMC
Evaluating the reliability of NAND multiplexing with PRISM
Probabilistic-model checking is a formal verification technique for analyzing the reliability and performance of systems exhibiting stochastic behavior. In this paper, we demonstrate the applicability of this approach and, in particular, the probabilistic-model-checking tool PRISM to the evaluation of reliability and redundancy of defect-tolerant systems in the field of computer-aided design. We illustrate the technique with an example due to von Neumann, namely NAND multiplexing. We show how, having constructed a model of a defect-tolerant system incorporating probabilistic assumptions about its defects, it is straightforward to compute a range of reliability measures and investigate how they are affected by slight variations in the behavior of the system. This allows a designer to evaluate, for example, the tradeoff between redundancy and reliability in the design. We also highlight errors in analytically computed reliability bounds, recently published for the same case study
Evaluating the reliability of NAND multiplexing with PRISM
Probabilistic-model checking is a formal verification technique for analyzing the reliability and performance of systems exhibiting stochastic behavior. In this paper, we demonstrate the applicability of this approach and, in particular, the probabilistic-model-checking tool PRISM to the evaluation of reliability and redundancy of defect-tolerant systems in the field of computer-aided design. We illustrate the technique with an example due to von Neumann, namely NAND multiplexing. We show how, having constructed a model of a defect-tolerant system incorporating probabilistic assumptions about its defects, it is straightforward to compute a range of reliability measures and investigate how they are affected by slight variations in the behavior of the system. This allows a designer to evaluate, for example, the tradeoff between redundancy and reliability in the design. We also highlight errors in analytically computed reliability bounds, recently published for the same case study
Fifty years of Hoare's Logic
We present a history of Hoare's logic.Comment: 79 pages. To appear in Formal Aspects of Computin
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