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A specification-based approach to concurrency analysis

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Abstract

The behavior of a concurrent program often depends on the arbitrary interleaving of computations performed by asynchronous processes. The resulting non-determinism can lead to such phenomena as deadlock and starvation, making program development extremely difficult, and consequently making the development of tools for formal analysis highly desirable.

A specification-based approach to concurrency analysis is a particularly promising way of addressing some of the difficulties inherent in concurrent program development. According to this approach, a programmer first writes a specification describing the interprocess communication behavior of a concurrent program. A set of formal analysis techniques are then applied in an effort to determine whether the specification can be fully satisfied. If the analysis is successful, target code is generated automatically that conforms to the specification.

This approach has a variety of benefits. While such properties as safety and liveness are rather difficult to discern in actual code, they are actually easy to include as part of a specification. Moreover, state spaces induced by specifications tend to be smaller and more manageable than state spaces of actual code, and this leads to more effective analysis techniques. Finally, the generation of interprocess communication code from formal specifications is accomplished in a relatively straightforward manner.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Illinois, Chicago

    Ugo Buy

  2. University of Massachusetts, Amherst

    Robert Moll

Authors
  1. Ugo Buy
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  2. Robert Moll
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Research partially supported by NSF grant CCR-9109231.

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Buy, U., Moll, R. A specification-based approach to concurrency analysis. Autom Software Eng 2, 265–309 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00871802

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