10855049
Automatic Synthesis of Real Time Systems
This paper presents a method for automatically constructing real time systems directly from their specifications. The model–construction problem is considered for implicit specifications of the form: (A1 | . . . |An |X) sat S where S is a real time (logical) specification, A1 . . . An are given (regular) timed agents and the problem is to decide whether there exists (and if possible exhibit) a real time agent X which when put in parallel with A1 . . . An will yield a network satisfying S. The method presented proceeds in two steps: first, the implicit specification of X is transformed into an equivalent direct specification of X; second, a model for this direct specification is constructed (if possible) using a direct model construction algorithm. A prototype implementation of our method has been added to the real time verification tool EPSILON.
14315022
Scaling up Uppaal Automatic Verification of Real-Time Systems Using Compositionality and Abstraction
To combat the state-explosion problem in automatic verification, we present a method for scaling up the real-time verification tool UPPAAL by complementing it with methods for abstraction and compositionality. We identify a notion of timed ready simulation which we show is a sound condition for preservation of safety properties between real-time systems, and in addition is a precongruence with respect to parallel composition. Thus, it supports both abstraction and compositionality. We furthermore present a method for automatically testing for the existence of a timed ready simulation between real-time systems using the UPPAAL tool.
8987497
Efficient Timed Reachability Analysis Using Clock Difference Diagrams
One of the major problems in applying automatic verification tools to industrial-size systems is the excessive amount of memory required during the state-space exploration of a model. In the setting of real-time, this problem of state-explosion requires extra attention as information must be kept not only on the discrete control structure but also on the values of continuous clock variables. 
 
In this paper, we exploit Clock Difference Diagrams, CDD's, a BDD-like data-structure for representing and effectively manipulating certain nonconvex subsets of the Euclidean space, notably those encountered during verification of timed automata. 
 
A version of the real-time verification tool Uppaal using CDD's as a compact data-structure for storing explored symbolic states has been implemented. Our experimental results demonstrate significant spacesavings: for eight industrial examples, the savings are in average 42% with moderate increase in runtime. 
 
We further report on how the symbolic state-space exploration itself may be carried out using CDD's.
1457644
Time-Optimal Test Cases for Real-Time Systems
Testing is the primary software validation technique used by industry today, but remains ad hoc, error prone, and very expensive. A promising improvement is to automatically generate test cases from formal models of the system under test.
4574615
As Cheap as Possible: Efficient Cost-Optimal Reachability for Priced Timed Automata
In this paper we present an algorithm for efficiently computing optimal cost of reaching a goal state in the model of Linearly Priced Timed Automata (LPTA). The central contribution of this paper is a priced extension of so-called zones. This, together with a notion of facets of a zone, allows the entire machinery for symbolic reachability for timed automata in terms of zones to be lifted to cost-optimal reachability using priced zones. We report on experiments with a cost-optimizing extension of Uppaal on a number of examples.
12983032
Practical verification of embedded software
Using a new verification algorithm called the compositional backward technique, the authors demonstrate that they can exhaustively verify even the largest industrial applications-comprising more than 1,000 components-in a few minutes on a standard PC.
20091231
Relaxed balance for search trees with local rebalancing
Abstract. Search trees with relaxed balance were introduced with the aim of facilitating fast updating on shared-memory asynchronous parallel architectures. To obtain this, rebalancing has been uncoupled from the updating, so extensive locking in connection with updates is avoided. Rebalancing is taken care of by background processes, which do only a constant amount of work at a time before they release locks. Thus, the rebalancing and the associated locks are very localized in time as well as in space. In particular, there is no exclusive locking of whole paths. This means that the amount of parallelism possible is not limited by the height of the tree. Search trees with relaxed balance have been obtained by adapting standard sequential search trees to this new paradigm; clearly using similar techniques in each case, but no general result has been obtained. We show how any search tree with local bottom-up rebalancing can be used in a relaxed variant, preserving the complexity of the rebalancing from the sequential case. Additionally, we single out the one high level locking mechanism that a parallel implementation must provide in order to guarantee cons istency. Though the ideas have come from search trees, the result presented here applies to tree structures in general, where operations initiated at the leaves progress towards the root in constant-sized steps.
207106047
Efficient Rebalancing of B-Trees with Relaxed Balance
B-trees with relaxed balance have been defined to facilitate fast updating on shared-memory asynchronous parallel architectures. To obtain this, rebalancing has been uncoupled from the updating so that extensive locking can be avoided in connection with updates. We analyze B-trees with relaxed balance, and prove that each update gives rise to at most [loga(N/2)]+1 rebalancing operations, where a is the degree of the B-tree, and N is the bound on its maximal size since it was last in balance. Assuming that the size of nodes is at least twice the degree, we prove that rebalancing can be performed in amortized constant time. So, in the long run, rebalancing is constant time on average, even if any particular update could give rise to a logarithmic number of rebalancing operations. We also prove that the amount of rebalancing done at any particular level decreases exponentially going from the leaves towards the root. This is important since the higher up in the tree a lock due to a rebalancing operation occurs, the larger a subtree which cannot be accessed by other processes for the duration of that lock. All of these results are in fact obtained for the more general (a, b)-trees, so we have results for both of the common B-tree versions as well as 2-3 trees and 2-3-4 trees.
3019314
Amortized constant relaxed rebalancing using standard rotations
Abstract. The idea of relaxed balance is to uncouple the rebalancing in search trees from the updating in order to speed up request processing in main-memory databases. This paper defines the first relaxed binary search tree with amortized constant rebalancing using only standard single or double rotations.
14238837
Dynamic TCP acknowledgment in the LogP model
When messages, which are to be sent point-to-point in a network, become available at irregular intervals, a decision must be made each time a new message becomes available as to whether it should be sent immediately or if it is better to wait for more messages and send them all together. Because of physical properties of the networks, a certain minimum amount of time must elapse in between the transmission of two packets. Thus, whereas waiting delays the transmission of the current data, sending immediately may delay the transmission of the next data to become available even more. We propose a new quality measure and derive optimal deterministic and randomized algorithms for this on-line problem.
406624
Model Checking Timed Automata with Priorities Using DBM Subtraction
In this paper we describe an extension of timed automata with priorities, and efficient algorithms to compute subtraction on DBMs (difference bounded matrices), needed in symbolic model-checking of timed automata with priorities. The subtraction is one of the few operations on DBMs that result in a non-convex set needing sets of DBMs for representation. Our subtraction algorithms are efficient in the sense that the number of generated DBMs is significantly reduced compared to a naive algorithm. The overhead in time is compensated by the gain from reducing the number of resulting DBMs since this number affects the performance of symbolic model-checking. The uses of the DBM subtraction operation extend beyond timed automata with priorities. It is also useful for allowing guards on transitions with urgent actions, deadlock checking, and timed games.