Our growing dependence on increasingly complex computer and software systems necessitates the development of formalisms, techniques, and tools for assessing functional properties of these systems. One such technique that has emerged in the last twenty years is model checking, which systematically (and automatically) checks whether a model of a given system satisfies a desired property such as deadlock freedom, invariants, and request-response properties. This automated technique for verification and debugging has developed into a mature and widely used approach with many applications. Principles of Model Checking offers a comprehensive introduction to model checking that is not only a text suitable for classroom use but also a valuable reference for researchers and practitioners in the field. The book begins with the basic principles for modeling concurrent and communicating systems, introduces different classes of properties (including safety and liveness), presents the notion of fairness, and provides automata-based algorithms for these properties. It introduces the temporal logics LTL and CTL, compares them, and covers algorithms for verifying these logics, discussing real-time systems as well as systems subject to random phenomena. Separate chapters treat such efficiency-improving techniques as abstraction and symbolic manipulation. The book includes an extensive set of examples (most of which run through several chapters) and a complete set of basic results accompanied by detailed proofs. Each chapter concludes with a summary, bibliographic notes, and an extensive list of exercises of both practical and theoretical nature.

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Principles of Model Checking

https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~alur/TCS95.pdf

The algorithmic analysis of hybrid systems

Program analysis utilizes static techniques for computing reliable information about the dynamic behavior of programs. Applications include compilers (for code improvement), software validation (for detecting errors) and transformations between data representation (for solving problems such as Y2K). This book is unique in providing an overview of the four major approaches to program analysis: data flow analysis, constraint-based analysis, abstract interpretation, and type and effect systems. The presentation illustrates the extensive similarities between the approaches, helping readers to choose the best one to utilize.

Principles of program analysis

We summarize several recent results about hybrid automata. Our goal is to demonstrate that concepts from the theory of discrete concurrent systems can give insights into partly continuous systems, and that methods for the verification of finite-state systems can be used to analyze certain systems with uncountable state spaces.

The theory of hybrid automata

https://hal.inria.fr/inria-00075711/document

The ESTEREL synchronous programming language: design, semantics, implementation

/pdf/automatic-discovery-of-linear-restraints-among-variables-of-4lyseyeyff.pdf

Automatic discovery of linear restraints among variables of a program

The authors describe LUSTRE, a data flow synchronous language designed for programming reactive systems-such as automatic control and monitoring systems-as well as for describing hardware. The data flow aspect of LUSTRE makes it very close to usual description tools in these domains (block-diagrams, networks of operators, dynamical sample-systems, etc.), and its synchronous interpretation makes it well suited for handling time in programs. Moreover, this synchronous interpretation allows it to be compiled into an efficient sequential program. The LUSTRE formalism is very similar to temporal logics. This allows the language to be used for both writing programs and expressing program properties, which results in an original program verification methodology. >

/pdf/the-synchronous-data-flow-programming-language-lustre-2j8zn4zee2.pdf

The synchronous data flow programming language LUSTRE

This book presents a synthesis of recent works concerning reactive system design. The term `reactive system' has been introduced in order to avoid ambiguities often involved with the term `real-time system' which, while being best-known and suggestive, has been assigned so many different meanings that it is almost inevitably misunderstood. Industrial Process control system, transportation control and supervision systems, signal processing systems, etc. are examples of the systems we have in mind. Four programming languages are presented, which share the same underlying synchronous model: based on Robin Milner's pioneering works about synchronous process algebras, this model consists in considering that a program instantaneously reacts to events, or that the machine execution time is negligible with respect to the response delays of its environment. Using this abstract point of view, the time behavior of a system can be formalized in a very simple and elegant way. The languages presented are ESTEREL, a textual imperative language; ARGOS, a graphical language inspired by STATECHARTS; and LUSTRE and SIGNAL, two declarative languages. After a tutorial description of the languages, illustrated by various examples, a set of related tools is presented: compilers to sequential and distributed code, silicon compilers, verification tools.

http://www-verimag.imag.fr/~halbwach/newbook.pdf

Synchronous programming of reactive systems

Twelve years ago, Proceedings of the IEEE devoted a special section to the synchronous languages. This paper discusses the improvements, difficulties, and successes that have occured with the synchronous languages since then. Today, synchronous languages have been established as a technology of choice for modeling, specifying, validating, and implementing real-time embedded applications. The paradigm of synchrony has emerged as an engineer-friendly design method based on mathematically sound tools.

/pdf/the-synchronous-languages-12-years-later-55re7ed5k3.pdf

Nicolas Halbwachs

Papers

The algorithmic analysis of hybrid systems

Automatic discovery of linear restraints among variables of a program

The synchronous data flow programming language LUSTRE

Synchronous programming of reactive systems

The synchronous languages 12 years later