Igor Melatti, Robert Palmer, Geoffrey Sawaya, Yu Yang, Robert Mike Kirby, and Ganesh Gopalakrishnan. "Parallel and Distributed Model Checking in Eddy." In Model Checking Software, 13th International SPIN Workshop, Vienna, Austria, March 30 – April 1, 2006, Proceedings, edited by A. Valmari, 108–125. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3925. Springer - Verlag, 2006. ISSN: 0302-9743. DOI: 10.1007/11691617_7.
Abstract: Model checking of safety properties can be scaled up by pooling the CPU and memory resources of multiple computers. As compute clusters containing 100s of nodes, with each node realized using multi-core (e.g., 2) CPUs will be widespread, a model checker based on the parallel (shared memory) and distributed (message passing) paradigms will more efficiently use the hardware resources. Such a model checker can be designed by having each node employ two shared memory threads that run on the (typically) two CPUs of a node, with one thread responsible for state generation, and the other for efficient communication, including (i) performing overlapped asynchronous message passing, and (ii) aggregating the states to be sent into larger chunks in order to improve communication network utilization. We present the design details of such a novel model checking architecture called Eddy. We describe the design rationale, details of how the threads interact and yield control, exchange messages, as well as detect termination. We have realized an instance of this architecture for the Murphi modeling language. Called Eddy_Murphi, we report its performance over the number of nodes as well as communication parameters such as those controlling state aggregation. Nearly linear reduction of compute time with increasing number of nodes is observed. Our thread task partition is done in such a way that it is modular, easy to port across different modeling languages, and easy to tune across a variety of platforms.
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Federico Mari, Igor Melatti, Ivano Salvo, and Enrico Tronci. "Synthesis of Quantized Feedback Control Software for Discrete Time Linear Hybrid Systems." In Computer Aided Verification, edited by T. Touili, B. Cook and P. Jackson, 180–195. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 6174. Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, 2010. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-14295-6_20.
Abstract: We present an algorithm that given a Discrete Time Linear Hybrid System returns a correct-by-construction software implementation K for a (near time optimal) robust quantized feedback controller for along with the set of states on which K is guaranteed to work correctly (controllable region). Furthermore, K has a Worst Case Execution Time linear in the number of bits of the quantization schema.
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Federico Mari, Igor Melatti, Ivano Salvo, and Enrico Tronci. "Undecidability of Quantized State Feedback Control for Discrete Time Linear Hybrid Systems." In Theoretical Aspects of Computing – ICTAC 2012, edited by A. Roychoudhury and M. D'Souza, 243–258. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 7521. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2012. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-32943-2_19.
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Giuseppe Della Penna, Antinisca Di Marco, Benedetto Intrigila, Igor Melatti, and Alfonso Pierantonio. "Xere: Towards a Natural Interoperability between XML and ER Diagrams." In Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering, 6th International Conference, FASE 2003, Held as Part of the Joint European Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2003, Warsaw, Poland, April 7-11, 2003, Proceedings, edited by M. Pezzè, 356–371. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2621. Springer, 2003. ISSN: 3-540-00899-3. DOI: 10.1007/3-540-36578-8_25.
Abstract: XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is becoming the standard format for documents on Internet and is widely used to exchange data. Often, the relevant information contained in XML documents needs to be also stored in legacy databases (DB) in order to integrate the new data with the pre-existing ones. In this paper, we introduce a technique for the automatic XML-DB integration, which we call Xere. In particular we present, as the first step of Xere, the mapping algorithm which allows the translation of XML Schemas into Entity-Relationship diagrams.
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Giuseppe Della Penna, Benedetto Intrigila, Igor Melatti, Michele Minichino, Ester Ciancamerla, Andrea Parisse, Enrico Tronci, and Marisa Venturini Zilli. "Automatic Verification of a Turbogas Control System with the Mur$\varphi$ Verifier." In Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control, 6th International Workshop, HSCC 2003 Prague, Czech Republic, April 3-5, 2003, Proceedings, edited by O. Maler and A. Pnueli, 141–155. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2623. Springer, 2003. ISSN: 3-540-00913-2. DOI: 10.1007/3-540-36580-X.
Abstract: Automatic analysis of Hybrid Systems poses formidable challenges both from a modeling as well as from a verification point of view. We present a case study on automatic verification of a Turbogas Control System (TCS) using an extended version of the Mur$\varphi$ verifier. TCS is the heart of ICARO, a 2MW Co-generative Electric Power Plant. For large hybrid systems, as TCS is, the modeling effort accounts for a significant part of the whole verification activity. In order to ease our modeling effort we extended the Mur$\varphi$ verifier by importing the C language long double type (finite precision real numbers) into it. We give experimental results on running our extended Mur$\varphi$ on our TCS model. For example using Mur$\varphi$ we were able to compute an admissible range of values for the variation speed of the user demand of electric power to the turbogas.
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Federico Mari, Igor Melatti, Ivano Salvo, and Enrico Tronci. "Synthesizing Control Software from Boolean Relations." International Journal on Advances in Software vol. 5, nr 3&4 (2012): 212–223. IARIA. ISSN: 1942-2628.
Abstract: Many software as well digital hardware automatic
synthesis methods define the set of
implementations meeting the given system
specifications with a boolean relation K. In
such a context a fundamental step in the software
(hardware) synthesis process is finding effective
solutions to the functional equation defined by
K. This entails finding a (set of) boolean
function(s) F (typically represented using
OBDDs, Ordered Binary Decision Diagrams)
such that: 1) for all x for which K is
satisfiable, K(x, F(x)) = 1 holds; 2) the
implementation of F is efficient with respect
to given implementation parameters such as code
size or execution time. While this problem has
been widely studied in digital hardware synthesis,
little has been done in a software synthesis
context. Unfortunately, the approaches developed
for hardware synthesis cannot be directly used in
a software context. This motivates investigation
of effective methods to solve the above problem
when F has to be implemented with software. In
this paper, we present an algorithm that, from an
OBDD representation for K, generates a C code
implementation for F that has the same size as
the OBDD for F and a worst case execution time
linear in nr, being n = |x| the number of
input arguments for functions in F and r the
number of functions in F. Moreover, a formal
proof of the proposed algorithm correctness is
also shown. Finally, we present experimental
results showing effectiveness of the proposed
algorithm.
Keywords: Control Software Synthesis; Embedded Systems; Model Checking
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Federico Mari, Igor Melatti, Ivano Salvo, and Enrico Tronci. "Linear Constraints and Guarded Predicates as a Modeling Language for Discrete Time Hybrid Systems." International Journal on Advances in Software vol. 6, nr 1&2 (2013): 155–169. IARIA. ISSN: 1942-2628.
Abstract: Model based design is particularly appealing in
software based control systems (e.g., embedded
software) design, since in such a case system
level specifications are much easier to define
than the control software behavior itself. In
turn, model based design of embedded systems
requires modeling both continuous subsystems
(typically, the plant) as well as discrete
subsystems (the controller). This is typically
done using hybrid systems. Mixed Integer Linear
Programming (MILP) based abstraction techniques
have been successfully applied to automatically
synthesize correct-by-construction control
software for discrete time linear hybrid systems,
where plant dynamics is modeled as a linear
predicate over state, input, and next state
variables. Unfortunately, MILP solvers require
such linear predicates to be conjunctions of
linear constraints, which is not a natural way of
modeling hybrid systems. In this paper we show
that, under the hypothesis that each variable
ranges over a bounded interval, any linear
predicate built upon conjunction and disjunction
of linear constraints can be automatically
translated into an equivalent conjunctive
predicate. Since variable bounds play a key role
in this translation, our algorithm includes a
procedure to compute all implicit variable bounds
of the given linear predicate. Furthermore, we
show that a particular form of linear predicates,
namely guarded predicates, are a natural and
powerful language to succinctly model discrete
time linear hybrid systems dynamics. Finally, we
experimentally show the feasibility of our
approach on an important and challenging case
study taken from the literature, namely the
multi-input Buck DC-DC Converter. As an example,
the guarded predicate that models (with 57
constraints) a 6-inputs Buck DC-DC Converter is
translated in a conjunctive predicate (with 102
linear constraints) in about 40 minutes.
Keywords: Model-based software design; Linear predicates; Hybrid systems
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Giuseppe Della Penna, Benedetto Intrigila, Igor Melatti, Enrico Tronci, and Marisa Venturini Zilli. "Bounded Probabilistic Model Checking with the Mur$\varphi$ Verifier." In Formal Methods in Computer-Aided Design, 5th International Conference, FMCAD 2004, Austin, Texas, USA, November 15-17, 2004, Proceedings, edited by A. J. Hu and A. K. Martin, 214–229. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3312. Springer, 2004. ISSN: 3-540-23738-0. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-30494-4_16.
Abstract: In this paper we present an explicit verification algorithm for Probabilistic Systems defining discrete time/finite state Markov Chains. We restrict ourselves to verification of Bounded PCTL formulas (BPCTL), that is, PCTL formulas in which all Until operators are bounded, possibly with different bounds. This means that we consider only paths (system runs) of bounded length. Given a Markov Chain $\cal M$ and a BPCTL formula Φ, our algorithm checks if Φ is satisfied in $\cal M$. This allows to verify important properties, such as reliability in Discrete Time Hybrid Systems. We present an implementation of our algorithm within a suitable extension of the Mur$\varphi$ verifier. We call FHP-Mur$\varphi$ (Finite Horizon Probabilistic Mur$\varphi$) such extension of the Mur$\varphi$ verifier. We give experimental results comparing FHP-Mur$\varphi$ with (a finite horizon subset of) PRISM, a state-of-the-art symbolic model checker for Markov Chains. Our experimental results show that FHP-Mur$\varphi$ can effectively handle verification of BPCTL formulas for systems that are out of reach for PRISM, namely those involving arithmetic operations on the state variables (e.g. hybrid systems).
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Federico Mari, Igor Melatti, Ivano Salvo, Enrico Tronci, Lorenzo Alvisi, Allen Clement, and Harry Li. "Model Checking Coalition Nash Equilibria in MAD Distributed Systems." In Stabilization, Safety, and Security of Distributed Systems, 11th International Symposium, SSS 2009, Lyon, France, November 3-6, 2009. Proceedings, edited by R. Guerraoui and F. Petit, 531–546. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 5873. Springer, 2009. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-05118-0_37.
Abstract: We present two OBDD based model checking algorithms for the verification of Nash equilibria in finite state mechanisms modeling Multiple Administrative Domains (MAD) distributed systems with possibly colluding agents (coalitions) and with possibly faulty or malicious nodes (Byzantine agents). Given a finite state mechanism, a proposed protocol for each agent and the maximum sizes f for Byzantine agents and q for agents collusions, our model checkers return Pass if the proposed protocol is an ε-f-q-Nash equilibrium, i.e. no coalition of size up to q may have an interest greater than ε in deviating from the proposed protocol when up to f Byzantine agents are present, Fail otherwise. We implemented our model checking algorithms within the NuSMV model checker: the first one explicitly checks equilibria for each coalition, while the second represents symbolically all coalitions. We present experimental results showing their effectiveness for moderate size mechanisms. For example, we can verify coalition Nash equilibria for mechanisms which corresponding normal form games would have more than $5 \times 10^21$ entries. Moreover, we compare the two approaches, and the explicit algorithm turns out to outperform the symbolic one. To the best of our knowledge, no model checking algorithm for verification of Nash equilibria of mechanisms with coalitions has been previously published.
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Giuseppe Della Penna, Benedetto Intrigila, Igor Melatti, Enrico Tronci, and Marisa Venturini Zilli. "Finite Horizon Analysis of Markov Chains with the Mur$\varphi$ Verifier." In Correct Hardware Design and Verification Methods, 12th IFIP WG 10.5 Advanced Research Working Conference, CHARME 2003, L'Aquila, Italy, October 21-24, 2003, Proceedings, edited by D. Geist and E. Tronci, 394–409. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2860. Springer, 2003. ISSN: 3-540-20363-X. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-39724-3_34.
Abstract: In this paper we present an explicit disk based verification algorithm for Probabilistic Systems defining discrete time/finite state Markov Chains. Given a Markov Chain and an integer k (horizon), our algorithm checks whether the probability of reaching an error state in at most k steps is below a given threshold. We present an implementation of our algorithm within a suitable extension of the Mur$\varphi$ verifier. We call the resulting probabilistic model checker FHP-Mur$\varphi$ (Finite Horizon Probabilistic Mur$\varphi$). We present experimental results comparing FHP-Mur$\varphi$ with (a finite horizon subset of) PRISM, a state-of-the-art symbolic model checker for Markov Chains. Our experimental results show that FHP-Mur$\varphi$ can handle systems that are out of reach for PRISM, namely those involving arithmetic operations on the state variables (e.g. hybrid systems).
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