Complexity Bounds for Ordinal-Based Termination

`What more than its truth do we know if we have a proof of a theorem in a given formal system?' We examine Kreisel's question in the particular context of program termination proofs, with an eye to deriving complexity bounds on program running times. Our main tool for this are length function theorems, which provide complexity bounds on the use of well quasi orders. We illustrate how to prove such theorems in the simple yet until now untreated case of ordinals. We show how to apply this new theorem to derive complexity bounds on programs when they are proven to terminate thanks to a ranking function into some ordinal.Comment: Invited talk at the 8th International Workshop on Reachability Problems (RP 2014, 22-24 September 2014, Oxford

A Characterization for Decidable Separability by Piecewise Testable Languages

The separability problem for word languages of a class $\mathcal{C}$ by languages of a class $\mathcal{S}$ asks, for two given languages $I$ and $E$ from $\mathcal{C}$, whether there exists a language $S$ from $\mathcal{S}$ that includes $I$ and excludes $E$, that is, $I \subseteq S$ and $S\cap E = \emptyset$. In this work, we assume some mild closure properties for $\mathcal{C}$ and study for which such classes separability by a piecewise testable language (PTL) is decidable. We characterize these classes in terms of decidability of (two variants of) an unboundedness problem. From this, we deduce that separability by PTL is decidable for a number of language classes, such as the context-free languages and languages of labeled vector addition systems. Furthermore, it follows that separability by PTL is decidable if and only if one can compute for any language of the class its downward closure wrt. the scattered substring ordering (i.e., if the set of scattered substrings of any language of the class is effectively regular). The obtained decidability results contrast some undecidability results. In fact, for all (non-regular) language classes that we present as examples with decidable separability, it is undecidable whether a given language is a PTL itself. Our characterization involves a result of independent interest, which states that for any kind of languages $I$ and $E$, non-separability by PTL is equivalent to the existence of common patterns in $I$ and $E$

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 coverability in ν-Petri nets

We show that the coverability problem in ν-Petri nets is complete for ‘double Ackermann’ time, thus closing an open complexity gap between an Ackermann lower bound and a hyper-Ackermann upper bound. The coverability problem captures the verification of safety properties in this nominal extension of Petri nets with name management and fresh name creation. Our completeness result establishes ν-Petri nets as a model of intermediate power among the formalisms of nets enriched with data, and relies on new algorithmic insights brought by the use of well-quasi-order ideals

Parameterized Systems in BIP: Design and Model Checking

BIP is a component-based framework for system design that has important industrial applications. BIP is built on three pillars: behavior, interaction, and priority. In this paper, we introduce first-order interaction logic (FOIL) that extends BIP to systems parameterized in the number of components. We show that FOIL captures classical parameterized architectures such as token-passing rings, cliques of identical components communicating with rendezvous or broadcast, and client-server systems. Although the BIP framework includes efficient verification tools for statically-defined systems, none are available for parameterized systems with an unbounded number of components. The parameterized model checking literature contains a wealth of techniques for systems of classical architectures. However, application of these results requires a deep understanding of parameterized model checking techniques and their underlying mathematical models. To overcome these difficulties, we introduce a framework that automatically identifies parameterized model checking techniques applicable to a BIP design. To our knowledge, it is the first framework that allows one to apply prominent parameterized model checking results in a systematic way

Expressive Power of Broadcast Consensus Protocols

Population protocols are a formal model of computation by identical, anonymous mobile agents interacting in pairs. Their computational power is rather limited: Angluin et al. have shown that they can only compute the predicates over N^k expressible in Presburger arithmetic. For this reason, several extensions of the model have been proposed, including the addition of devices called cover-time services, absence detectors, and clocks. All these extensions increase the expressive power to the class of predicates over N^k lying in the complexity class NL when the input is given in unary. However, these devices are difficult to implement, since they require that an agent atomically receives messages from all other agents in a population of unknown size; moreover, the agent must know that they have all been received. Inspired by the work of the verification community on Emerson and Namjoshi\u27s broadcast protocols, we show that NL-power is also achieved by extending population protocols with reliable broadcasts, a simpler, standard communication primitive

The Parametric Complexity of Lossy Counter Machines

The reachability problem in lossy counter machines is the best-known ACKERMANN-complete problem and has been used to establish most of the ACKERMANN-hardness statements in the literature. This hides however a complexity gap when the number of counters is fixed. We close this gap and prove F_d-completeness for machines with d counters, which provides the first known uncontrived problems complete for the fast-growing complexity classes at levels 3 < d < omega. We develop for this an approach through antichain factorisations of bad sequences and analysing the length of controlled antichains

Complexity of Coverability in Bounded Path Broadcast Networks

Broadcast networks are a formalism of distributed computation that allow one to model networks of identical nodes communicating through message broadcasts over a communication topology that does not change over the course of executions. The parameterized verification problem for these networks amounts to proving correctness of a property for any number of nodes, and on all executions. Dually speaking, this problem asks for the existence of an execution of the broadcast network that violates a given property. One specific instance of parameterized verification is the coverability problem which asks whether there is an execution of the network in which some node reaches a given state of the broadcast protocol. This problem was proven to be undecidable by Delzanno, Sangnier and Zavattaro (CONCUR 2010). In the same paper, the authors also prove that, if we additionally assume that the underlying communication topology has a bound on the longest path, then the coverability problem becomes decidable. In this paper, we provide complexity results for the above problem and prove that the coverability problem for bounded-path topologies is ?_??-complete, where ?_?? is a class in the fast-growing hierarchy of complexity classes. This solves an open problem of Hasse, Schmitz and Schnoebelen (LMCS, Vol 10, Issue 4)