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 give a comprehensive and unifying survey of the theoretical aspects of Temporal and modal logic.

A concurrent object is a data object shared by concurrent processes. Linearizability is a correctness condition for concurrent objects that exploits the semantics of abstract data types. It permits a high degree of concurrency, yet it permits programmers to specify and reason about concurrent objects using known techniques from the sequential domain. Linearizability provides the illusion that each operation applied by concurrent processes takes effect instantaneously at some point between its invocation and its response, implying that the meaning of a concurrent object’s operations can be given by pre- and post-conditions. This paper defines linearizability, compares it to other correctness conditions, presents and demonstrates a method for proving the correctness of implementations, and shows how to reason about concurrent objects, given they are linearizable.

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This paper was originally submitted to ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems. The responsible editor was Susan L. Graham. The authors and editor kindly agreed to transfer the paper to the ACM Transactions on Computer Systems

. We introduce a temporal logic for the specification of real-time systems. Our logic, TPTL, employs a novel quantifier construct for referencing time: the freeze quantifier binds a variable to the time of the local temporal context. TPTL is both a natural language for specification and a suitable formalism for verification. We present a tableau-based decision procedure and a model checking algorithm for TPTL. Several generalizations of TPTL are shown to be highly undecidable. 1 Introduction Linear temporal logic is a widely accepted language for specifying properties of reactive systems and their behavior over time [Pnu77, OL82, MP92]. The tableau-based satisfiability algorithm for its propositional version, PTL, forms the basis for the automatic verification and synthesis of finite-state systems [LP84, MW84]. PTL is interpreted over models that abstract away from the actual times at which events occur, retaining only temporal ordering information about the states of a system. The a...

A new solution to the mutual exclusion problem is presented that, in the absence of contention, requires only seven memory accesses. It assumes atomic reads and atomic writes to shared registers. Capsule Review To build a useful computing system from a collection of processors that communicate by sharing memory, but lack any atomic operation more complex than a memory read or write, it is necessary to implement mutual exclusion using only these operations. Solutions to this problem have been known for twenty years, but they are linear in the number of processors. Lamport presents a new algorithm which takes constant time (five writes and two reads) in the absence of contention, which is the normal case. To achieve this performance it sacrifices fairness, which is probably unimportant in practical applications. The paper gives an informal argument that the algorithm's performance in the absence of contention is optimal, and a fairly formal proof of safety and freedom from deadlock, u...

Abstract. The automata-theoretic approach to linear temporal logic uses the theory of automata as a unifying paradigm for program specification, verification, and synthesis. Both programs and specifications are in essence descriptions of computations. These computations can be viewed as words over some alphabet. Thus,programs and specificationscan be viewed as descriptions of languagesover some alphabet. The automata-theoretic perspective considers the relationships between programs and their specifications as relationships between languages.By translating programs and specifications to automata, questions about programs and their specifications can be reduced to questions about automata. More specifically, questions such as satisfiability of specifications and correctness of programs with respect to their specifications can be reduced to questions such as nonemptiness and containment of automata. Unlike classical automata theory, which focused on automata on finite words, the applications to program specification, verification, and synthesis, use automata on infinite words, since the computations in which we are interested are typically infinite. This paper provides an introduction to the theory of automata on infinite words and demonstrates its applications to program specification, verification, and synthesis. 1