We describe a method for reducing the complexity of temporal logic model checking in systems composed of many parallel processes. The goal is to check properties of the components of a system and then deduce global properties from these local properties. The main difficulty with this type of approach is that local properties are often not preserved at the global level. We present a general framework for using additional interface processes to model the environment for a component. These interface processes are typically much simpler than the full environment of the component. By composing a component with its interface processes and then checking properties of this composition, we can guarantee that these properties will be preserved at the global level. We give two example compositional systems based on the logic CTL*.

We give an efficient procedure for verifying that a finite-state concurrent system meets a specification expressed in a (propositional, branching-time) temporal logic. Our algorithm has complexity linear in both the size of the specification and the size of the global state graph for the concurrent system. We also show how this approach can be adapted to handle fairness. We argue that our technique can provide a practical alternative to manual proof construction or use of a mechanical theorem prover for verifying many finite-state concurrent systems. Experimental results show that state machines with several hundred states can be checked in a matter of seconds.

We present a logic for stating properties such as, "after a request for service there is at least a 98% probability that the service will be carried out within 2 seconds". The logic extends the temporal logic CTL by Emerson, Clarke and Sistla with time and probabilities. Formulas are interpreted over discrete time Markov chains. We give algorithms for checking that a given Markov chain satisfies a formula in the logic. The algorithms require a polynomial number of arithmetic operations, in size of both the formula and This research report is a revised and extended version of a paper that has appeared under the title "A Framework for Reasoning about Time and Reliability" in the Proceeding of the 10 th IEEE Real-time Systems Symposium, Santa Monica CA, December 1989. This work was partially supported by the Swedish Board for Technical Development (STU) as part of Esprit BRA Project SPEC, and by the Swedish Telecommunication Administration. the Markov chain. A simple example is inc...

The research on algorithmic verification methods for concurrent and parallel systems has mostly focussed on finite-state systems, with applications in e.g. communication protocols and hardware systems. For infinite-state systems, e.g. systems that operate on data from unbounded domains, algorithmic verification is more difficult, since most verification problems are in general undecidable. In this paper, we consider the verification of a particular class of infinite-state systems, namely systems consisting of finite-state processes that communicate via unbounded lossy FIFO channels. This class is able to model e.g. link protocols such as the Alternating Bit Protocol and HDLC. The unboundedness of the channels makes these systems infinite-state. For this class of systems, we show that several interesting verification problems are decidable by giving algorithms for verifying the following classes of properties.

We present a method for computing abstractions of infinite state systems compositionally and automatically. Given a concrete system S = S1 k \Delta \Delta \Delta k Sn of programs and given an abstraction function ff, using our method one can compute an abstract system S a = Sa 1 k \Delta \Delta \Delta k S a n such that S simulates S a. A distinguishing feature of our method is that it does not produce a single abstract state graph but rather preserves the structure of the concrete system. This feature is a prerequisite to benefit from the techniques developed in the context of model-checking for mitigating the state explosion. Moreover, our method has the advantage that the process of constructing the abstract system does not depend on whether the computation model is synchronous or asynchronous.

Abstract The Concurrency Workbench is an automated tool for analyzing networks of finite-state processes expressed in Milner's Calculus of Communicating Systems. Its key feature is its breadth: a variety of different verification methods, including equivalence checking, preorder checking, and model checking, are supported for several different process semantics. One experience from our work is that a large number of interesting verification methods can be formulated as combinations of a small number of primitive algorithms. The Workbench has been applied to the verification of communications protocols and mutual exclusion algorithms and has proven a valuable aid in teaching and research. 1 Introduction This paper describes the Concurrency Workbench [11, 12, 13], a tool that supports the automatic verification of finite-state processes. Such tools are practically motivated: the development of complex distributed computer systems requires sophisticated verification techniques to guarantee correctness, and the increase in detail rapidly becomes unmanageable without computer assistance. Finite-state systems, such as communications protocols and hardware, are particularly suitable for automated analysis because their finitary nature ensures the existence of decision procedures for a wide range of system properties.

: We present a formal model that captures the subtle interaction between knowledge and action in distributed systems. We view a distributed system as a set of runs, where a run is a function from time to global states and a global state is a tuple consisting of an environment state and a local state for each process in the system. This model is a generalization of those used in many previous papers. Actions in this model are associated with functions from global states to global states. A protocol is a function from local states to actions. We extend the standard notion of a protocol by defining knowledge-based protocols, ones in which a process' actions may depend explicitly on its knowledge. Knowledge-based protocols provide a natural way of describing how actions should take place in a distributed system. Finally, we show how the notion of one protocol implementing another can be captured in our model. Some material in this paper appeared in preliminary form in [HF85]. An abridge...

Two aspects of reliability of distributed protocols are a protocol's ability to recover from transient faults and a protocol's ability to function in a dynamic environment. Approaches for both of these aspects have been separately developed, but have drawbacks when applied to an environment that has both transient faults and dynamic changes. This paper introduces definitions and methods for addressing both concerns in the design of systems. A protocol is superstabilizing if it is (i) self-stabilizing, meaning that it is guaranteed to respond to an arbitrary transient fault by eventually satisfying and maintaining a legitimacy predicate, and (ii) it is guaranteed to satisfy a passage predicate at all times when the system undergoes topology changes starting from a legitimate state. The passage predicate is typically a safety property that should hold while the protocol makes progress towards re-establishing legitimacy following a topology change. Specific contributions of the paper inc...

) Bernard Boigelot Universit'e de Li`ege Institut Montefiore, B28 4000 Li`ege Sart-Tilman, Belgium Email: boigelot@montefiore.ulg.ac.be Patrice Godefroid Lucent Technologies -- Bell Laboratories 1000 E. Warrenville Road Naperville, IL 60566, U.S.A. Email: god@bell-labs.com Abstract We study the verification of properties of communication protocols modeled by a finite set of finite-state machines that communicate by exchanging messages via unbounded FIFO queues. It is well-known that most interesting verification problems, such as deadlock detection, are undecidable for this class of systems. However, in practice, these verification problems may very well turn out to be decidable for a subclass containing most "real" protocols. Motivated by this optimistic (and, we claim, realistic) observation, we present an algorithm that may construct a finite and exact representation of the state space of a communication protocol, even if this state space is infinite. Our algorithm performs a loo...

. Communication protocols pose interesting and difficult challenges for verification technologies. The state spaces of interesting protocols are either infinite or too large for finite-state verification techniques like model checking and state exploration. Theorem proving is also not effective since the formal correctness proofs of these protocols can be long and complicated. We describe a series of protocol verification experiments culminating in a methodology where theorem proving is used to abstract out the sources of unboundedness in the protocol to yield a skeletal protocol that can be verified using model checking. Our experiments focus on the Philips bounded retransmission protocol originally studied by Groote and van de Pol and by Helmink, Sellink, and Vaandrager. First, a scaled-down version of the protocol is analyzed using the MurOE state exploration tool as a debugging aid and then translated into the PVS specification language. The PVS verification of the generalized prot...