3,409 research outputs found
A Short Counterexample Property for Safety and Liveness Verification of Fault-tolerant Distributed Algorithms
Distributed algorithms have many mission-critical applications ranging from
embedded systems and replicated databases to cloud computing. Due to
asynchronous communication, process faults, or network failures, these
algorithms are difficult to design and verify. Many algorithms achieve fault
tolerance by using threshold guards that, for instance, ensure that a process
waits until it has received an acknowledgment from a majority of its peers.
Consequently, domain-specific languages for fault-tolerant distributed systems
offer language support for threshold guards.
We introduce an automated method for model checking of safety and liveness of
threshold-guarded distributed algorithms in systems where the number of
processes and the fraction of faulty processes are parameters. Our method is
based on a short counterexample property: if a distributed algorithm violates a
temporal specification (in a fragment of LTL), then there is a counterexample
whose length is bounded and independent of the parameters. We prove this
property by (i) characterizing executions depending on the structure of the
temporal formula, and (ii) using commutativity of transitions to accelerate and
shorten executions. We extended the ByMC toolset (Byzantine Model Checker) with
our technique, and verified liveness and safety of 10 prominent fault-tolerant
distributed algorithms, most of which were out of reach for existing
techniques.Comment: 16 pages, 11 pages appendi
Flexible RNA design under structure and sequence constraints using formal languages
The problem of RNA secondary structure design (also called inverse folding)
is the following: given a target secondary structure, one aims to create a
sequence that folds into, or is compatible with, a given structure. In several
practical applications in biology, additional constraints must be taken into
account, such as the presence/absence of regulatory motifs, either at a
specific location or anywhere in the sequence. In this study, we investigate
the design of RNA sequences from their targeted secondary structure, given
these additional sequence constraints. To this purpose, we develop a general
framework based on concepts of language theory, namely context-free grammars
and finite automata. We efficiently combine a comprehensive set of constraints
into a unifying context-free grammar of moderate size. From there, we use
generic generic algorithms to perform a (weighted) random generation, or an
exhaustive enumeration, of candidate sequences. The resulting method, whose
complexity scales linearly with the length of the RNA, was implemented as a
standalone program. The resulting software was embedded into a publicly
available dedicated web server. The applicability demonstrated of the method on
a concrete case study dedicated to Exon Splicing Enhancers, in which our
approach was successfully used in the design of \emph{in vitro} experiments.Comment: ACM BCB 2013 - ACM Conference on Bioinformatics, Computational
Biology and Biomedical Informatics (2013
A Quantum Game of Life
This research describes a three dimensional quantum cellular automaton (QCA)
which can simulate all other 3D QCA. This intrinsically universal QCA belongs
to the simplest subclass of QCA: Partitioned QCA (PQCA). PQCA are QCA of a
particular form, where incoming information is scattered by a fixed unitary U
before being redistributed and rescattered. Our construction is minimal amongst
PQCA, having block size 2 x 2 x 2 and cell dimension 2. Signals, wires and
gates emerge in an elegant fashion.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures. Final version, accepted by Journ\'ees Automates
Cellulaires (JAC 2010)
A Unifying Approach to Decide Relations for Timed Automata and their Game Characterization
In this paper we present a unifying approach for deciding various
bisimulations, simulation equivalences and preorders between two timed automata
states. We propose a zone based method for deciding these relations in which we
eliminate an explicit product construction of the region graphs or the zone
graphs as in the classical methods. Our method is also generic and can be used
to decide several timed relations. We also present a game characterization for
these timed relations and show that the game hierarchy reflects the hierarchy
of the timed relations. One can obtain an infinite game hierarchy and thus the
game characterization further indicates the possibility of defining new timed
relations which have not been studied yet. The game characterization also helps
us to come up with a formula which encodes the separation between two states
that are not timed bisimilar. Such distinguishing formulae can also be
generated for many relations other than timed bisimilarity.Comment: In Proceedings EXPRESS/SOS 2013, arXiv:1307.690
A process-algebraic semantics for generalised nonblocking.
Generalised nonblocking is a weak liveness property to express the ability of a system to terminate under given preconditions. This paper studies the notions of equivalence and refinement that preserve generalised nonblocking and proposes a semantic model that characterises generalised nonblocking equivalence. The model can be constructed from the transition structure of an automaton, and has a finite representation for every finite-state automaton. It is used to construct a unique automaton representation for all generalised nonblocking equivalent automata. This gives rise to effective decision procedures to verify generalised nonblocking equivalence and refinement, and to a method to simplify automata while preserving generalised nonblocking equivalence. The results of this paper provide for better understanding of nonblocking in a compositional framework, with possible applications in compositional verification
On the Number of Synchronizing Colorings of Digraphs
We deal with -out-regular directed multigraphs with loops (called simply
\emph{digraphs}). The edges of such a digraph can be colored by elements of
some fixed -element set in such a way that outgoing edges of every vertex
have different colors. Such a coloring corresponds naturally to an automaton.
The road coloring theorem states that every primitive digraph has a
synchronizing coloring.
In the present paper we study how many synchronizing colorings can exist for
a digraph with vertices. We performed an extensive experimental
investigation of digraphs with small number of vertices. This was done by using
our dedicated algorithm exhaustively enumerating all small digraphs. We also
present a series of digraphs whose fraction of synchronizing colorings is equal
to , for every and the number of vertices large enough.
On the basis of our results we state several conjectures and open problems.
In particular, we conjecture that is the smallest possible fraction of
synchronizing colorings, except for a single exceptional example on 6 vertices
for .Comment: CIAA 2015. The final publication is available at
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-22360-5_1
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