On the Sets of Real Vectors Recognized by Finite Automata in Multiple Bases

Dear Reader, this edition of the MoVES newsletter is dedicated to Workpackage 6, focused on verification methods and tools, and presents results obtained by the University of Liège on that topic. This issue of the newsletter describes three recent results that cover different research topics in the field of verification. The first result, presented on p. 2, introduces an original method for analyzing concurrent programs running on multi-core processors. These processors actually rely on a memory architecture that has particular properties, which can introduce errors in the execution of programs that have not been specifically tailored to this architecture. Using a symbolic approach, we have developed a method for analyzing the properties of multi-core programs, as well as for translating automatically programs from one memory model to another. The second result, described on p. 3, is more theoretical. These past years, we have pioneered the use of automata as symbolic formalisms for representing the set of configurations handled during state-space exploration of systems. In particular, this approach has been applied to the symbolic representation of sets of numbers and vectors. The contribution is here to provide a complete characterization of the set of vectors that can be represented symbolically by automata-based formalisms. The automata-based symbolic representations developed in the framework of verification can also be applied to other problems. The third presented result, p. 4, introduces Implicit Real-Vector Automata, which are data structures that are able to represent canonically arbitrary polyhedra in n-dimensional space. Finally, the University of Liège will host next September a summer school on Verification Technology, Systems & Applications. Attendance is free (but registration is mandatory), and a few places have been reserved for MoVES partners, so do not hesitate to contact us if you are interested. Enjoy reading! Bernard Boigelot