@article{3861, abstract = {We introduce strategy logic, a logic that treats strategies in two-player games as explicit first-order objects. The explicit treatment of strategies allows us to specify properties of nonzero-sum games in a simple and natural way. We show that the one-alternation fragment of strategy logic is strong enough to express the existence of Nash equilibria and secure equilibria, and subsumes other logics that were introduced to reason about games, such as ATL, ATL*, and game logic. We show that strategy logic is decidable, by constructing tree automata that recognize sets of strategies. While for the general logic, our decision procedure is nonelementary, for the simple fragment that is used above we show that the complexity is polynomial in the size of the game graph and optimal in the size of the formula (ranging from polynomial to 2EXPTIME depending on the form of the formula).}, author = {Chatterjee, Krishnendu and Henzinger, Thomas A and Piterman, Nir}, journal = {Information and Computation}, number = {6}, pages = {677 -- 693}, publisher = {Elsevier}, title = {{Strategy logic}}, doi = {10.1016/j.ic.2009.07.004}, volume = {208}, year = {2010}, } @article{3863, abstract = {We consider two-player parity games with imperfect information in which strategies rely on observations that provide imperfect information about the history of a play. To solve such games, i.e., to determine the winning regions of players and corresponding winning strategies, one can use the subset construction to build an equivalent perfect-information game. Recently, an algorithm that avoids the inefficient subset construction has been proposed. The algorithm performs a fixed-point computation in a lattice of antichains, thus maintaining a succinct representation of state sets. However, this representation does not allow to recover winning strategies. In this paper, we build on the antichain approach to develop an algorithm for constructing the winning strategies in parity games of imperfect information. One major obstacle in adapting the classical procedure is that the complementation of attractor sets would break the invariant of downward-closedness on which the antichain representation relies. We overcome this difficulty by decomposing problem instances recursively into games with a combination of reachability, safety, and simpler parity conditions. We also report on an experimental implementation of our algorithm: to our knowledge, this is the first implementation of a procedure for solving imperfect-information parity games on graphs.}, author = {Berwanger, Dietmar and Chatterjee, Krishnendu and De Wulf, Martin and Doyen, Laurent and Henzinger, Thomas A}, journal = {Information and Computation}, number = {10}, pages = {1206 -- 1220}, publisher = {Elsevier}, title = {{Strategy construction for parity games with imperfect information}}, doi = {10.1016/j.ic.2009.09.006}, volume = {208}, year = {2010}, } @inproceedings{3864, abstract = {Often one has a preference order among the different systems that satisfy a given specification. Under a probabilistic assumption about the possible inputs, such a preference order is naturally expressed by a weighted automaton, which assigns to each word a value, such that a system is preferred if it generates a higher expected value. We solve the following optimal-synthesis problem: given an omega-regular specification, a Markov chain that describes the distribution of inputs, and a weighted automaton that measures how well a system satisfies the given specification tinder the given input assumption, synthesize a system that optimizes the measured value. For safety specifications and measures that are defined by mean-payoff automata, the optimal-synthesis problem amounts to finding a strategy in a Markov decision process (MDP) that is optimal for a long-run average reward objective, which can be done in polynomial time. For general omega-regular specifications, the solution rests on a new, polynomial-time algorithm for computing optimal strategies in MDPs with mean-payoff parity objectives. We present some experimental results showing optimal systems that were automatically generated in this way.}, author = {Chatterjee, Krishnendu and Henzinger, Thomas A and Jobstmann, Barbara and Singh, Rohit}, location = {Edinburgh, United Kingdom}, pages = {380 -- 395}, publisher = {Springer}, title = {{Measuring and synthesizing systems in probabilistic environments}}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-642-14295-6_34}, volume = {6174}, year = {2010}, } @inproceedings{3866, abstract = {Systems ought to behave reasonably even in circumstances that are not anticipated in their specifications. We propose a definition of robustness for liveness specifications which prescribes, for any number of environment assumptions that are violated, a minimal number of system guarantees that must still be fulfilled. This notion of robustness can be formulated and realized using a Generalized Reactivity formula. We present an algorithm for synthesizing robust systems from such formulas. For the important special case of Generalized Reactivity formulas of rank 1, our algorithm improves the complexity of [PPS06] for large specifications with a small number of assumptions and guarantees.}, author = {Bloem, Roderick and Chatterjee, Krishnendu and Greimel, Karin and Henzinger, Thomas A and Jobstmann, Barbara}, editor = {Touili, Tayssir and Cook, Byron and Jackson, Paul}, location = {Edinburgh, UK}, pages = {410 -- 424}, publisher = {Springer}, title = {{Robustness in the presence of liveness}}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-642-14295-6_36}, volume = {6174}, year = {2010}, } @article{3867, abstract = {Weighted automata are nondeterministic automata with numerical weights on transitions. They can define quantitative languages L that assign to each word w a real number L(w). In the case of infinite words, the value of a run is naturally computed as the maximum, limsup, liminf, limit-average, or discounted-sum of the transition weights. The value of a word w is the supremum of the values of the runs over w. We study expressiveness and closure questions about these quantitative languages. We first show that the set of words with value greater than a threshold can be omega-regular for deterministic limit-average and discounted-sum automata, while this set is always omega-regular when the threshold is isolated (i.e., some neighborhood around the threshold contains no word). In the latter case, we prove that the omega-regular language is robust against small perturbations of the transition weights. We next consider automata with transition weights 0 or 1 and show that they are as expressive as general weighted automata in the limit-average case, but not in the discounted-sum case. Third, for quantitative languages L-1 and L-2, we consider the operations max(L-1, L-2), min(L-1, L-2), and 1 - L-1, which generalize the boolean operations on languages, as well as the sum L-1 + L-2. We establish the closure properties of all classes of quantitative languages with respect to these four operations.}, author = {Chatterjee, Krishnendu and Doyen, Laurent and Henzinger, Thomas A}, journal = {Logical Methods in Computer Science}, number = {3}, pages = {1 -- 23}, publisher = {International Federation of Computational Logic}, title = {{Expressiveness and closure properties for quantitative languages}}, doi = {10.2168/LMCS-6(3:10)2010}, volume = {6}, year = {2010}, } @inproceedings{4361, abstract = {Depth-bounded processes form the most expressive known fragment of the π-calculus for which interesting verification problems are still decidable. In this paper we develop an adequate domain of limits for the well-structured transition systems that are induced by depth-bounded processes. An immediate consequence of our result is that there exists a forward algorithm that decides the covering problem for this class. Unlike backward algorithms, the forward algorithm terminates even if the depth of the process is not known a priori. More importantly, our result suggests a whole spectrum of forward algorithms that enable the effective verification of a large class of mobile systems.}, author = {Wies, Thomas and Zufferey, Damien and Henzinger, Thomas A}, editor = {Ong, Luke}, location = {Paphos, Cyprus}, pages = {94 -- 108}, publisher = {Springer}, title = {{Forward analysis of depth-bounded processes}}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-642-12032-9_8}, volume = {6014}, year = {2010}, } @inproceedings{4362, abstract = {Software transactional memories (STMs) promise simple and efficient concurrent programming. Several correctness properties have been proposed for STMs. Based on a bounded conflict graph algorithm for verifying correctness of STMs, we develop TRACER, a tool for runtime verification of STM implementations. The novelty of TRACER lies in the way it combines coarse and precise runtime analyses to guarantee sound and complete verification in an efficient manner. We implement TRACER in the TL2 STM implementation. We evaluate the performance of TRACER on STAMP benchmarks. While a precise runtime verification technique based on conflict graphs results in an average slowdown of 60x, the two-level approach of TRACER performs complete verification with an average slowdown of around 25x across different benchmarks.}, author = {Singh, Vasu}, editor = {Sokolsky, Oleg and Rosu, Grigore and Tilmann, Nikolai and Barringer, Howard and Falcone, Ylies and Finkbeiner, Bernd and Havelund, Klaus and Lee, Insup and Pace, Gordon}, location = {St. Julians, Malta}, pages = {421 -- 435}, publisher = {Springer}, title = {{Runtime verification for software transactional memories}}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-642-16612-9_32}, volume = {6418}, year = {2010}, } @inproceedings{4369, abstract = {In this paper we propose a novel technique for constructing timed automata from properties expressed in the logic mtl, under bounded-variability assumptions. We handle full mtl and include all future operators. Our construction is based on separation of the continuous time monitoring of the input sequence and discrete predictions regarding the future. The separation of the continuous from the discrete allows us to determinize our automata in an exponential construction that does not increase the number of clocks. This leads to a doubly exponential construction from mtl to deterministic timed automata, compared with triply exponential using existing approaches. We offer an alternative to the existing approach to linear real-time model checking, which has never been implemented. It further offers a unified framework for model checking, runtime monitoring, and synthesis, in an approach that can reuse tools, implementations, and insights from the discrete setting.}, author = {Nickovic, Dejan and Piterman, Nir}, editor = {Henzinger, Thomas A. and Chatterjee, Krishnendu}, location = {Klosterneuburg, Austria}, pages = {152 -- 167}, publisher = {Springer}, title = {{From MTL to deterministic timed automata}}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-642-15297-9_13}, volume = {6246}, year = {2010}, } @inproceedings{4378, abstract = {Techniques such as verification condition generation, predicate abstraction, and expressive type systems reduce software verification to proving formulas in expressive logics. Programs and their specifications often make use of data structures such as sets, multisets, algebraic data types, or graphs. Consequently, formulas generated from verification also involve such data structures. To automate the proofs of such formulas we propose a logic (a “calculus”) of such data structures. We build the calculus by starting from decidable logics of individual data structures, and connecting them through functions and sets, in ways that go beyond the frameworks such as Nelson-Oppen. The result are new decidable logics that can simultaneously specify properties of different kinds of data structures and overcome the limitations of the individual logics. Several of our decidable logics include abstraction functions that map a data structure into its more abstract view (a tree into a multiset, a multiset into a set), into a numerical quantity (the size or the height), or into the truth value of a candidate data structure invariant (sortedness, or the heap property). For algebraic data types, we identify an asymptotic many-to-one condition on the abstraction function that guarantees the existence of a decision procedure. In addition to the combination based on abstraction functions, we can combine multiple data structure theories if they all reduce to the same data structure logic. As an instance of this approach, we describe a decidable logic whose formulas are propositional combinations of formulas in: weak monadic second-order logic of two successors, two-variable logic with counting, multiset algebra with Presburger arithmetic, the Bernays-Schönfinkel-Ramsey class of first-order logic, and the logic of algebraic data types with the set content function. The subformulas in this combination can share common variables that refer to sets of objects along with the common set algebra operations. Such sound and complete combination is possible because the relations on sets definable in the component logics are all expressible in Boolean Algebra with Presburger Arithmetic. Presburger arithmetic and its new extensions play an important role in our decidability results. In several cases, when we combine logics that belong to NP, we can prove the satisfiability for the combined logic is still in NP.}, author = {Kuncak, Viktor and Piskac, Ruzica and Suter, Philippe and Wies, Thomas}, editor = {Barthe, Gilles and Hermenegildo, Manuel}, location = {Madrid, Spain}, pages = {26 -- 44}, publisher = {Springer}, title = {{Building a calculus of data structures}}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-642-11319-2_6}, volume = {5944}, year = {2010}, } @inproceedings{4380, abstract = {Cloud computing is an emerging paradigm aimed to offer users pay-per-use computing resources, while leaving the burden of managing the computing infrastructure to the cloud provider. We present a new programming and pricing model that gives the cloud user the flexibility of trading execution speed and price on a per-job basis. We discuss the scheduling and resource management challenges for the cloud provider that arise in the implementation of this model. We argue that techniques from real-time and embedded software can be useful in this context.}, author = {Henzinger, Thomas A and Tomar, Anmol and Singh, Vasu and Wies, Thomas and Zufferey, Damien}, location = {Arizona, USA}, pages = {1 -- 8}, publisher = {ACM}, title = {{A marketplace for cloud resources}}, doi = {10.1145/1879021.1879022}, year = {2010}, } @inproceedings{4381, abstract = {Cloud computing aims to give users virtually unlimited pay-per-use computing resources without the burden of managing the underlying infrastructure. We claim that, in order to realize the full potential of cloud computing, the user must be presented with a pricing model that offers flexibility at the requirements level, such as a choice between different degrees of execution speed and the cloud provider must be presented with a programming model that offers flexibility at the execution level, such as a choice between different scheduling policies. In such a flexible framework, with each job, the user purchases a virtual computer with the desired speed and cost characteristics, and the cloud provider can optimize the utilization of resources across a stream of jobs from different users. We designed a flexible framework to test our hypothesis, which is called FlexPRICE (Flexible Provisioning of Resources in a Cloud Environment) and works as follows. A user presents a job to the cloud. The cloud finds different schedules to execute the job and presents a set of quotes to the user in terms of price and duration for the execution. The user then chooses a particular quote and the cloud is obliged to execute the job according to the chosen quote. FlexPRICE thus hides the complexity of the actual scheduling decisions from the user, but still provides enough flexibility to meet the users actual demands. We implemented FlexPRICE in a simulator called PRICES that allows us to experiment with our framework. We observe that FlexPRICE provides a wide range of execution options-from fast and expensive to slow and cheap-- for the whole spectrum of data-intensive and computation-intensive jobs. We also observe that the set of quotes computed by FlexPRICE do not vary as the number of simultaneous jobs increases.}, author = {Henzinger, Thomas A and Tomar, Anmol and Singh, Vasu and Wies, Thomas and Zufferey, Damien}, location = {Miami, USA}, pages = {83 -- 90}, publisher = {IEEE}, title = {{FlexPRICE: Flexible provisioning of resources in a cloud environment}}, doi = {10.1109/CLOUD.2010.71}, year = {2010}, } @inproceedings{4382, abstract = {Transactional memory (TM) has shown potential to simplify the task of writing concurrent programs. Inspired by classical work on databases, formal definitions of the semantics of TM executions have been proposed. Many of these definitions assumed that accesses to shared data are solely performed through transactions. In practice, due to legacy code and concurrency libraries, transactions in a TM have to share data with non-transactional operations. The semantics of such interaction, while widely discussed by practitioners, lacks a clear formal specification. Those interactions can vary, sometimes in subtle ways, between TM implementations and underlying memory models. We propose a correctness condition for TMs, parametrized opacity, to formally capture the now folklore notion of strong atomicity by stipulating the two following intuitive requirements: first, every transaction appears as if it is executed instantaneously with respect to other transactions and non-transactional operations, and second, non-transactional operations conform to the given underlying memory model. We investigate the inherent cost of implementing parametrized opacity. We first prove that parametrized opacity requires either instrumenting non-transactional operations (for most memory models) or writing to memory by transactions using potentially expensive read-modify-write instructions (such as compare-and-swap). Then, we show that for a class of practical relaxed memory models, parametrized opacity can indeed be implemented with constant-time instrumentation of non-transactional writes and no instrumentation of non-transactional reads. We show that, in practice, parametrizing the notion of correctness allows developing more efficient TM implementations.}, author = {Guerraoui, Rachid and Henzinger, Thomas A and Kapalka, Michal and Singh, Vasu}, location = {Santorini, Greece}, pages = {263 -- 272}, publisher = {ACM}, title = {{Transactions in the jungle}}, doi = {10.1145/1810479.1810529}, year = {2010}, } @inproceedings{4388, abstract = {GIST is a tool that (a) solves the qualitative analysis problem of turn-based probabilistic games with ω-regular objectives; and (b) synthesizes reasonable environment assumptions for synthesis of unrealizable specifications. Our tool provides the first and efficient implementations of several reduction-based techniques to solve turn-based probabilistic games, and uses the analysis of turn-based probabilistic games for synthesizing environment assumptions for unrealizable specifications.}, author = {Chatterjee, Krishnendu and Henzinger, Thomas A and Jobstmann, Barbara and Radhakrishna, Arjun}, location = {Edinburgh, UK}, pages = {665 -- 669}, publisher = {Springer}, title = {{GIST: A solver for probabilistic games}}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-642-14295-6_57}, volume = {6174}, year = {2010}, } @inproceedings{4389, abstract = {Digital components play a central role in the design of complex embedded systems. These components are interconnected with other, possibly analog, devices and the physical environment. This environment cannot be entirely captured and can provide inaccurate input data to the component. It is thus important for digital components to have a robust behavior, i.e. the presence of a small change in the input sequences should not result in a drastic change in the output sequences. In this paper, we study a notion of robustness for sequential circuits. However, since sequential circuits may have parts that are naturally discontinuous (e.g., digital controllers with switching behavior), we need a flexible framework that accommodates this fact and leaves discontinuous parts of the circuit out from the robustness analysis. As a consequence, we consider sequential circuits that have their input variables partitioned into two disjoint sets: control and disturbance variables. Our contributions are (1) a definition of robustness for sequential circuits as a form of continuity with respect to disturbance variables, (2) the characterization of the exact class of sequential circuits that are robust according to our definition, (3) an algorithm to decide whether a sequential circuit is robust or not.}, author = {Doyen, Laurent and Henzinger, Thomas A and Legay, Axel and Nickovic, Dejan}, pages = {77 -- 84}, publisher = {IEEE}, title = {{Robustness of sequential circuits}}, doi = {10.1109/ACSD.2010.26}, year = {2010}, } @inproceedings{4390, abstract = {Concurrent data structures with fine-grained synchronization are notoriously difficult to implement correctly. The difficulty of reasoning about these implementations does not stem from the number of variables or the program size, but rather from the large number of possible interleavings. These implementations are therefore prime candidates for model checking. We introduce an algorithm for verifying linearizability of singly-linked heap-based concurrent data structures. We consider a model consisting of an unbounded heap where each vertex stores an element from an unbounded data domain, with a restricted set of operations for testing and updating pointers and data elements. Our main result is that linearizability is decidable for programs that invoke a fixed number of methods, possibly in parallel. This decidable fragment covers many of the common implementation techniques — fine-grained locking, lazy synchronization, and lock-free synchronization. We also show how the technique can be used to verify optimistic implementations with the help of programmer annotations. We developed a verification tool CoLT and evaluated it on a representative sample of Java implementations of the concurrent set data structure. The tool verified linearizability of a number of implementations, found a known error in a lock-free implementation and proved that the corrected version is linearizable.}, author = {Cerny, Pavol and Radhakrishna, Arjun and Zufferey, Damien and Chaudhuri, Swarat and Alur, Rajeev}, location = {Edinburgh, UK}, pages = {465 -- 479}, publisher = {Springer}, title = {{Model checking of linearizability of concurrent list implementations}}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-642-14295-6_41}, volume = {6174}, year = {2010}, } @inbook{4392, abstract = {While a boolean notion of correctness is given by a preorder on systems and properties, a quantitative notion of correctness is defined by a distance function on systems and properties, where the distance between a system and a property provides a measure of “fit” or “desirability.” In this article, we explore several ways how the simulation preorder can be generalized to a distance function. This is done by equipping the classical simulation game between a system and a property with quantitative objectives. In particular, for systems that satisfy a property, a quantitative simulation game can measure the “robustness” of the satisfaction, that is, how much the system can deviate from its nominal behavior while still satisfying the property. For systems that violate a property, a quantitative simulation game can measure the “seriousness” of the violation, that is, how much the property has to be modified so that it is satisfied by the system. These distances can be computed in polynomial time, since the computation reduces to the value problem in limit average games with constant weights. Finally, we demonstrate how the robustness distance can be used to measure how many transmission errors are tolerated by error correcting codes. }, author = {Cerny, Pavol and Henzinger, Thomas A and Radhakrishna, Arjun}, booktitle = {Time For Verification: Essays in Memory of Amir Pnueli}, editor = {Manna, Zohar and Peled, Doron}, pages = {42 -- 60}, publisher = {Springer}, title = {{Quantitative Simulation Games}}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-642-13754-9_3}, volume = {6200}, year = {2010}, } @inproceedings{4393, abstract = {Boolean notions of correctness are formalized by preorders on systems. Quantitative measures of correctness can be formalized by real-valued distance functions between systems, where the distance between implementation and specification provides a measure of “fit” or “desirability.” We extend the simulation preorder to the quantitative setting, by making each player of a simulation game pay a certain price for her choices. We use the resulting games with quantitative objectives to define three different simulation distances. The correctness distance measures how much the specification must be changed in order to be satisfied by the implementation. The coverage distance measures how much the implementation restricts the degrees of freedom offered by the specification. The robustness distance measures how much a system can deviate from the implementation description without violating the specification. We consider these distances for safety as well as liveness specifications. The distances can be computed in polynomial time for safety specifications, and for liveness specifications given by weak fairness constraints. We show that the distance functions satisfy the triangle inequality, that the distance between two systems does not increase under parallel composition with a third system, and that the distance between two systems can be bounded from above and below by distances between abstractions of the two systems. These properties suggest that our simulation distances provide an appropriate basis for a quantitative theory of discrete systems. We also demonstrate how the robustness distance can be used to measure how many transmission errors are tolerated by error correcting codes.}, author = {Cerny, Pavol and Henzinger, Thomas A and Radhakrishna, Arjun}, location = {Paris, France}, pages = {235 -- 268}, publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik}, title = {{Simulation distances}}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-642-15375-4_18}, volume = {6269}, year = {2010}, } @inproceedings{4396, abstract = {Shape analysis is a promising technique to prove program properties about recursive data structures. The challenge is to automatically determine the data-structure type, and to supply the shape analysis with the necessary information about the data structure. We present a stepwise approach to the selection of instrumentation predicates for a TVLA-based shape analysis, which takes us a step closer towards the fully automatic verification of data structures. The approach uses two techniques to guide the refinement of shape abstractions: (1) during program exploration, an explicit heap analysis collects sample instances of the heap structures, which are used to identify the data structures that are manipulated by the program; and (2) during abstraction refinement along an infeasible error path, we consider different possible heap abstractions and choose the coarsest one that eliminates the infeasible path. We have implemented this combined approach for automatic shape refinement as an extension of the software model checker BLAST. Example programs from a data-structure library that manipulate doubly-linked lists and trees were successfully verified by our tool.}, author = {Beyer, Dirk and Henzinger, Thomas A and Théoduloz, Grégory and Zufferey, Damien}, editor = {Rosenblum, David and Taenzer, Gabriele}, location = {Paphos, Cyprus}, pages = {263 -- 277}, publisher = {Springer}, title = {{Shape refinement through explicit heap analysis}}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-642-12029-9_19}, volume = {6013}, year = {2010}, } @misc{5393, abstract = {Gist is a tool that (a) solves the qualitative analysis problem of turn-based probabilistic games with ω-regular objectives; and (b) synthesizes reasonable environment assumptions for synthesis of unrealizable specifications. Our tool provides efficient implementations of several reduction based techniques to solve turn-based probabilistic games, and uses the analysis of turn-based probabilistic games for synthesizing environment assumptions for unrealizable specifications.}, author = {Chatterjee, Krishnendu and Henzinger, Thomas A and Jobstmann, Barbara and Radhakrishna, Arjun}, issn = {2664-1690}, pages = {12}, publisher = {IST Austria}, title = {{Gist: A solver for probabilistic games}}, doi = {10.15479/AT:IST-2009-0003}, year = {2009}, } @misc{5394, abstract = {We consider two-player games played on graphs with request-response and finitary Streett objectives. We show these games are PSPACE-hard, improving the previous known NP-hardness. We also improve the lower bounds on memory required by the winning strategies for the players.}, author = {Chatterjee, Krishnendu and Henzinger, Thomas A and Horn, Florian}, issn = {2664-1690}, pages = {11}, publisher = {IST Austria}, title = {{Improved lower bounds for request-response and finitary Streett games}}, doi = {10.15479/AT:IST-2009-0002}, year = {2009}, }