Abstract: This paper describes a generic proof method for the correctness of refinements of Abstract State Machines based on commuting diagrams. The method generalizes forward simulations from the refinement of I/O automata by allowing arbitrary m:n diagrams, and by combining it with the refinement of data structures.

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Abstract: We present a survey of formal speci cation techniques applied to the Tree Identify Protocol of the IEEE 1394 High Performance Serial Bus 1. Speci cations written in a variety of formalisms are compared with regard to a number of criteria including expressiveness, readability, standardisation, and level of analysis.

Component reuse techniques... In this paper, we propose an algorithm for automatic matching of a design function to a device from a component database. The distinguishing feature of the algorithm is that when successful, it generates an interface which can automatically adapt the device to behave as the function. The algorithm is based on a new simulation relation called forced simulation which is shown to be a necessary and sucient condition for component matching to be possible for a given pair of function and device. We demonstrate the application of the algorithm by reusing on some programmable components of the Intel family.

In this paper, we consider action-labelled systems with non-deterministic and probabilistic choice. Using the concept of norm functions [GV98], we introduce two types of bisimulations that allow for delays when simulating a transition. The so obtained equivalences (called (strict) normed bisimulation equivalence) are strictly between strong and weak bisimulation equivalence `a la [LS89, SL94, SL95]. Using a suitable modification of the prominent splitter/partitioning technique [KS83, PT87], we present polynomial-time algorithms that constructs the quotient space of the (strict) normed bisimulation equivalence classes. Moreover, we briefly discuss other aspects such as the soundness for establishing linear time properties and compositiality.

Embedded systems are application-specific digital systems which are normally designed using a microprocessor along with a set of programmable hardware and software components. Component-based synthesis of these systems will lead to the reuse of a vast library of hardware and software components and also facilitate rapid prototyping. However component based synthesis is still lowkey, a primary reason being the lackofany systematic attempt at the development of automatic component identification algorithms. In [21] an algorithm to map a design function to a device from a library of system-level components was proposed. However, it was not based on a formal setting and no proof of correctness was presented. In this paper, we propose a novel notion of simulation called forced simulation to formalize the correspondence between a function and a device. What distinguishes forced simulation from other techniques is the idea of forcing via an external interface, which can be automatically synthesized, and is useful for adapting the system level component to the given design functionality. We have proposed two differenttypes of forced simulation depending on the handling of internal events.

Component-based synthesis of embedded systems will lead to the reuse of a vast library of hardware and software components and also facilitate rapid prototyping. However it is still low key, a primary reason being the lack of a systematic attempt at the development of automatic component identification algorithms. The main task of such an algorithm is to to map a design function to a device from a library of system-level components. In this paper, we propose a novel notion of simulation called forced simulation to formalize the correspondence between a function and a device. What distinguishes forced simulation from other techniques is the idea of forcing via an external interface, which can be automatically synthesized, and is useful for adapting the system level component to the given design functionality. We propose a new component matching algorithm based on forced simulation and also propose a technique for the automatic generation of the interface. Finally, a proof of soundness of the approach is presented, based on reducing the synchronous parallel composition of the interface and the device to Milner's weak bisimulation.

... This paper studies various types of normed simulations. In a normed simulation, each step in a lower-level specification can be simulated by at most one step in the higher-level one, for any related pair of states. In earlier work we demonstrated that normed simulations are quite useful as a vehicle for the formalization of refinement proofs via theorem provers. Here we show that normed simulations also have pleasant theoretical properties: (1) under some reasonable assumptions, it is decidable whether a given relation is a normed forward simulation, provided tautology checking is decidable for the underlying logic; (2) at the semantic level, normed forward and backward simulations together form a complete proof method for establishing behavior inclusion, provided that the higher-level specification has finite invisible nondeterminism