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Automated Verification of Linearization Policies

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Static Analysis (SAS 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 9837))

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Abstract

We present a novel framework for automated verification of linearizability for concurrent data structures that implement sets, stacks, and queues. The framework requires the user to provide a linearization policy, which describes how linearization point placement in different concurrent threads affect each other; such linearization policies are often provided informally together with descriptions of new algorithms. We present a specification formalism for linearization policies which allows the user to specify, in a simple and concise manner, complex patterns including non-fixed linearization points. To automate verification, we extend thread-modular reasoning to bound the number of considered threads, and use a novel symbolic representation for unbounded heap structures that store data from an unbounded domain. We have implemented our framework in a tool and successfully used it to prove linearizability for a wide range of algorithms, including all implementations of concurrent sets, stacks, and queues based on singly-linked lists that are known to us from the literature.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the reviewers for helpful comments. This work was supported in part by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research within the ProFuN project, and by the Swedish Research Council within the UPMARC centre of excellence.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Parosh Aziz Abdulla, Bengt Jonsson & Cong Quy Trinh

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  1. Parosh Aziz Abdulla
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  2. Bengt Jonsson
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  3. Cong Quy Trinh
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Correspondence to Cong Quy Trinh .

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  1. Ecole Normale Supérieure , Paris, France

    Xavier Rival

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Abdulla, P.A., Jonsson, B., Trinh, C.Q. (2016). Automated Verification of Linearization Policies. In: Rival, X. (eds) Static Analysis. SAS 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9837. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-53413-7_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-53413-7_4

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