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History-Based Specification and Verification of Scalable Concurrent and Distributed Systems

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Formal Methods and Software Engineering (ICFEM 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 9407))

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Abstract

The ABS modelling language targets concurrent and distributed object-oriented systems. The language has been designed to enable scalable formal verification of detailed executable models. This paper provides evidence for that claim: it gives formal specifications of safety properties in terms of histories of observable communication for ABS models as well as formal proofs of those properties. We illustrate our approach with a case study of a Network-on-Chip packet switching platform. We provide an executable formal model in ABS of a generic \(m \times n\) mesh chip with an unbounded number of packets and verify several crucial properties. Our concern is formal verification of unbounded concurrent systems. In this paper we show how scalable verification can be achieved by compositional and local reasoning about history-based specifications of observable behavior.

Supported by the EU projects FP7-610582 Envisage: Engineering Virtualized Services (http://www.envisage-project.eu) and FP7-612985 UpScale: From Inherent Concurrency to Massive Parallelism through Type-based Optimizations (http://www.upscale-project.eu).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The complete model with all formal specifications and proofs is available at https://www.se.tu-darmstadt.de/se/group-members/crystal-chang-din/noc.

  2. 2.

    In the heap model of KeY-ABS, a heap value can potentially be modified when a process is released. Therefore, to prove the above property we need a slightly stronger invariant expressing that the address of a router in the heap is rigid (cannot be modified by any other process). Due to a current technical limitation of the tool, we proved the invariant for a slightly simplified model where the router address is a parameter of getPk. This modification does not affect the overall behavior of the model and will be lifted in future work.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge valuable discussions with Richard Bubel.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Crystal Chang Din & Reiner Hähnle

  2. Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    S. Lizeth Tapia Tarifa & Einar Broch Johnsen

Authors
  1. Crystal Chang Din
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  2. S. Lizeth Tapia Tarifa
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  3. Reiner Hähnle
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  4. Einar Broch Johnsen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Crystal Chang Din .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom

    Michael Butler

  2. Université Paris-Sud, Orsay, France

    Sylvain Conchon

  3. Université Paris-Sud, Orsay, France

    Fatiha Zaïdi

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Din, C.C., Tapia Tarifa, S.L., Hähnle, R., Johnsen, E.B. (2015). History-Based Specification and Verification of Scalable Concurrent and Distributed Systems. In: Butler, M., Conchon, S., Zaïdi, F. (eds) Formal Methods and Software Engineering. ICFEM 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9407. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25423-4_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25423-4_14

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