Safe CCSL Specifications and Marked Graphs

International audienceThe Clock Constraint Specification Language (CCSL) proposes a rich polychronous time model dedicated to the specification of constraints on logical clocks: i.e., sequences of event occurrences. A priori independent clocks are progressively constrained through a set of clock operators that define when an event may occur or not. These operators can be described as labeled transition systems that can potentially have an infinite number of states. A CCSL specification can be scheduled by performing the synchronized product of the transition systems for each operator. Even when some of the composed transition systems are infinite, the number of reachable states in the product may still be finite: the specification is safe. The purpose of this paper is to propose a sufficient condition to detect that the product is actually safe. This is done by abstracting each CCSL constraint (relation and expression) as a marked graph. Detecting that some specific places, called counters, in the resulting marked graph are safe is sufficient to guarantee that the composition is safe

Desynchronization: Synthesis of asynchronous circuits from synchronous specifications

Asynchronous implementation techniques, which measure logic delays at run time and activate registers accordingly, are inherently more robust than their synchronous counterparts, which estimate worst-case delays at design time, and constrain the clock cycle accordingly. De-synchronization is a new paradigm to automate the design of asynchronous circuits from synchronous specifications, thus permitting widespread adoption of asynchronicity, without requiring special design skills or tools. In this paper, we first of all study different protocols for de-synchronization and formally prove their correctness, using techniques originally developed for distributed deployment of synchronous language specifications. We also provide a taxonomy of existing protocols for asynchronous latch controllers, covering in particular the four-phase handshake protocols devised in the literature for micro-pipelines. We then propose a new controller which exhibits provably maximal concurrency, and analyze the performance of desynchronized circuits with respect to the original synchronous optimized implementation. We finally prove the feasibility and effectiveness of our approach, by showing its application to a set of real designs, including a complete implementation of the DLX microprocessor architectur

Correctness Issues on MARTE/CCSL constraints

International audienceThe UML Profile for Modeling and Analysis of Real-Time and Embedded systems promises a general modeling framework to design and analyze systems. Lots of works have been published on the modeling capabilities offered by MARTE, much less on available verification techniques. The Clock Constraint Specification Language (CCSL), first introduced as a companion language for MARTE, was devised to offer a formal support to conduct causal and temporal analysis on MARTE models.This work relies on a state-based semantics for CCSL to establish correctness properties on MARTE/CCSL specifications. We propose and compare two different techniques to build the state-space of a specification. One is an extension of some previous work and is based on extended finite state machines. It relies on integer linear programming to solve the constraints and reduce the state-space. The other one is based on an intentional representation and uses pure Boolean abstractions but offers no guarantee to terminate when the specification is not safe.The approach is illustrated on one simple example where the architecture plays an important role. We describe a process where the logical description of the application is progressively refined to take into account the execution platform through allocation

Safe CCSL Specifications and Marked Graphs

International audienceThe Clock Constraint Specification Language (CCSL) proposes a rich polychronous time model dedicated to the specification of constraints on logical clocks: i.e., sequences of event occurrences. A priori independent clocks are progressively constrained through a set of clock operators that define when an event may occur or not. These operators can be described as labeled transition systems that can potentially have an infinite number of states. A CCSL specification can be scheduled by performing the synchronized product of the transition systems for each operator. Even when some of the composed transition systems are infinite, the number of reachable states in the product may still be finite: the specification is safe. The purpose of this paper is to propose a sufficient condition to detect that the product is actually safe. This is done by abstracting each CCSL constraint (relation and expression) as a marked graph. Detecting that some specific places, called counters, in the resulting marked graph are safe is sufficient to guarantee that the composition is safe

Liquid Clocks - Refinement Types for Time-Dependent Stream Functions

The concept of liquid clocks introduced in this paper is a significant step towards a more precise compile-time framework for the analysis of synchronous and polychromous languages. Compiling languages such as Lustre or SIGNAL indeed involves a number of static analyses of programs before they can be synthesized into executable code, e.g., synchronicity class characterization, clock assignment, static scheduling or causality analysis. These analyses are often equivalent to undecidable problems, necessitating abstracting such programs to provide sound yet incomplete analyses. Such abstractions unfortunately often lead to the rejection of programs that could very well be synthesized into deterministic code, provided abstraction refinement steps could be applied for more accurate analysis. To reduce the false negatives occurring during the compilation process, we leverage recent advances in type theory -- with the definition of decidable classes of value-dependent type systems -- and formal verification, linked to the development of efficient SAT/SMT solvers, to provide a type-theoretic approach that considers all the above analyses as type inference problems. In order to simplify the exposition of our new approach in this paper, we define a refinement type system for a minimalistic, synchronous, stream-processing language to concisely represent, analyse, and verify logical and quantitative properties of programs expressed as stream-processing data-flow networks. Our type system provides a new framework to represent logical time (clocks) and scheduling properties, and to describe their relations with stream values and, possibly, other quantas. We show how to analyze synchronous stream processing programs (à la Lustre, Signal) to enable previously described analyzes involved in compiling such programs. We also prove the soundness of our type system and elaborate on the adaptability of this core framework by outlining its extensibility to specific models of computations and other quantas

Logical Time @ Work: Capturing Data Dependencies and Platform Constraints

International audienceData-flow models are convenient to represent signal processing systems. They precisely reflect the data-dependencies and numerous algorithms exist to compute a static schedule that optimizes a given criterion especially for parallel implementations. Once deployed the data-flow models must be refined with constraints imposed by the environment and the execution platform. In this paper, we show how we can model data dependencies supported by multi-dimensional synchronous data flow with logical time and extend these data dependencies with additional logical constraints imposed by the environment. Making explicit these external constraints allows the exploration of further solutions during the scheduling computation

Logical time at work: capturing data dependencies and platform constraints

International audienceData-flow models are convenient to represent signal processing systems. They precisely reflect the data-dependencies and numerous algorithms exist to compute a static schedule that optimizes a given criterion especially for parallel implementations. Once deployed the data-flow models must be refined with constraints imposed by the environment and the execution platform. In this paper, we show how we can model data dependencies supported by multi-dimensional synchronous data flow with logical time and extend these data dependencies with additional logical constraints imposed by the environment. Making explicit these external constraints allows the exploration of further solutions during the scheduling computation

Timing verification of interface specifications and controllers

Thèse numérisée par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal

Liquid Clocks - Refinement Types for Time-Dependent Stream Functions

The concept of liquid clocks introduced in this paper is a significant step towards a more precise compile-time framework for the analysis of synchronous and polychromous languages. Compiling languages such as Lustre or SIGNAL indeed involves a number of static analyses of programs before they can be synthesized into executable code, e.g., synchronicity class characterization, clock assignment, static scheduling or causality analysis. These analyses are often equivalent to undecidable problems, necessitating abstracting such programs to provide sound yet incomplete analyses. Such abstractions unfortunately often lead to the rejection of programs that could very well be synthesized into deterministic code, provided abstraction refinement steps could be applied for more accurate analysis. To reduce the false negatives occurring during the compilation process, we leverage recent advances in type theory -- with the definition of decidable classes of value-dependent type systems -- and formal verification, linked to the development of efficient SAT/SMT solvers, to provide a type-theoretic approach that considers all the above analyses as type inference problems. In order to simplify the exposition of our new approach in this paper, we define a refinement type system for a minimalistic, synchronous, stream-processing language to concisely represent, analyse, and verify logical and quantitative properties of programs expressed as stream-processing data-flow networks. Our type system provides a new framework to represent logical time (clocks) and scheduling properties, and to describe their relations with stream values and, possibly, other quantas. We show how to analyze synchronous stream processing programs (à la Lustre, Signal) to enable previously described analyzes involved in compiling such programs. We also prove the soundness of our type system and elaborate on the adaptability of this core framework by outlining its extensibility to specific models of computations and other quantas