676 research outputs found
On Affine Reachability Problems
We analyze affine reachability problems in dimensions 1 and 2. We show that the reachability problem for 1-register machines over the integers with affine updates is PSPACE-hard, hence PSPACE-complete, strengthening a result by Finkel et al. that required polynomial updates. Building on recent results on two-dimensional integer matrices, we prove NP-completeness of the mortality problem for 2-dimensional integer matrices with determinants +1 and 0. Motivated by tight connections with 1-dimensional affine reachability problems without control states, we also study the complexity of a number of reachability problems in finitely generated semigroups of 2-dimensional upper-triangular integer matrices
Integer Vector Addition Systems with States
This paper studies reachability, coverability and inclusion problems for
Integer Vector Addition Systems with States (ZVASS) and extensions and
restrictions thereof. A ZVASS comprises a finite-state controller with a finite
number of counters ranging over the integers. Although it is folklore that
reachability in ZVASS is NP-complete, it turns out that despite their
naturalness, from a complexity point of view this class has received little
attention in the literature. We fill this gap by providing an in-depth analysis
of the computational complexity of the aforementioned decision problems. Most
interestingly, it turns out that while the addition of reset operations to
ordinary VASS leads to undecidability and Ackermann-hardness of reachability
and coverability, respectively, they can be added to ZVASS while retaining
NP-completness of both coverability and reachability.Comment: 17 pages, 2 figure
Register automata with linear arithmetic
We propose a novel automata model over the alphabet of rational numbers,
which we call register automata over the rationals (RA-Q). It reads a sequence
of rational numbers and outputs another rational number. RA-Q is an extension
of the well-known register automata (RA) over infinite alphabets, which are
finite automata equipped with a finite number of registers/variables for
storing values. Like in the standard RA, the RA-Q model allows both equality
and ordering tests between values. It, moreover, allows to perform linear
arithmetic between certain variables. The model is quite expressive: in
addition to the standard RA, it also generalizes other well-known models such
as affine programs and arithmetic circuits.
The main feature of RA-Q is that despite the use of linear arithmetic, the
so-called invariant problem---a generalization of the standard non-emptiness
problem---is decidable. We also investigate other natural decision problems,
namely, commutativity, equivalence, and reachability. For deterministic RA-Q,
commutativity and equivalence are polynomial-time inter-reducible with the
invariant problem
On Verifying Causal Consistency
Causal consistency is one of the most adopted consistency criteria for
distributed implementations of data structures. It ensures that operations are
executed at all sites according to their causal precedence. We address the
issue of verifying automatically whether the executions of an implementation of
a data structure are causally consistent. We consider two problems: (1)
checking whether one single execution is causally consistent, which is relevant
for developing testing and bug finding algorithms, and (2) verifying whether
all the executions of an implementation are causally consistent.
We show that the first problem is NP-complete. This holds even for the
read-write memory abstraction, which is a building block of many modern
distributed systems. Indeed, such systems often store data in key-value stores,
which are instances of the read-write memory abstraction. Moreover, we prove
that, surprisingly, the second problem is undecidable, and again this holds
even for the read-write memory abstraction. However, we show that for the
read-write memory abstraction, these negative results can be circumvented if
the implementations are data independent, i.e., their behaviors do not depend
on the data values that are written or read at each moment, which is a
realistic assumption.Comment: extended version of POPL 201
History-Register Automata
Programs with dynamic allocation are able to create and use an unbounded
number of fresh resources, such as references, objects, files, etc. We propose
History-Register Automata (HRA), a new automata-theoretic formalism for
modelling such programs. HRAs extend the expressiveness of previous approaches
and bring us to the limits of decidability for reachability checks. The
distinctive feature of our machines is their use of unbounded memory sets
(histories) where input symbols can be selectively stored and compared with
symbols to follow. In addition, stored symbols can be consumed or deleted by
reset. We show that the combination of consumption and reset capabilities
renders the automata powerful enough to imitate counter machines, and yields
closure under all regular operations apart from complementation. We moreover
examine weaker notions of HRAs which strike different balances between
expressiveness and effectiveness.Comment: LMCS (improved version of FoSSaCS
Complexity Hierarchies Beyond Elementary
We introduce a hierarchy of fast-growing complexity classes and show its
suitability for completeness statements of many non elementary problems. This
hierarchy allows the classification of many decision problems with a
non-elementary complexity, which occur naturally in logic, combinatorics,
formal languages, verification, etc., with complexities ranging from simple
towers of exponentials to Ackermannian and beyond.Comment: Version 3 is the published version in TOCT 8(1:3), 2016. I will keep
updating the catalogue of problems from Section 6 in future revision
The Complexity of Flat Freeze LTL
We consider the model-checking problem for freeze LTL on one-counter automata (OCAs). Freeze LTL extends LTL with the freeze quantifier, which allows one to store different counter values of a run in registers so that they can be compared with one another. As the model-checking problem is undecidable in general, we focus on the flat fragment of freeze LTL, in which the usage of the freeze quantifier is restricted. Recently, Lechner et al. showed that model checking for flat freeze LTL on OCAs with binary encoding of counter updates is decidable and in 2NEXPTIME. In this paper, we prove that the problem is, in fact, NEXPTIME-complete no matter whether counter updates are encoded in unary or binary. Like Lechner et al., we rely on a reduction to the reachability problem in OCAs with parameterized tests (OCAPs). The new aspect is that we simulate OCAPs by alternating two-way automata over words. This implies an exponential upper bound on the parameter values that we exploit towards an NP algorithm for reachability in OCAPs with unary updates. We obtain our main result as a corollary
Reasoning about Data Repetitions with Counter Systems
We study linear-time temporal logics interpreted over data words with
multiple attributes. We restrict the atomic formulas to equalities of attribute
values in successive positions and to repetitions of attribute values in the
future or past. We demonstrate correspondences between satisfiability problems
for logics and reachability-like decision problems for counter systems. We show
that allowing/disallowing atomic formulas expressing repetitions of values in
the past corresponds to the reachability/coverability problem in Petri nets.
This gives us 2EXPSPACE upper bounds for several satisfiability problems. We
prove matching lower bounds by reduction from a reachability problem for a
newly introduced class of counter systems. This new class is a succinct version
of vector addition systems with states in which counters are accessed via
pointers, a potentially useful feature in other contexts. We strengthen further
the correspondences between data logics and counter systems by characterizing
the complexity of fragments, extensions and variants of the logic. For
instance, we precisely characterize the relationship between the number of
attributes allowed in the logic and the number of counters needed in the
counter system.Comment: 54 page
- âŠ