State (computer science)

About: State (computer science) is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 24436 publications have been published within this topic receiving 225733 citations.

Estimation of average switching activity in combinational and sequential circuits

Abstract: The authors address the problem of estimating the average power dissipated in VLSI combinational and sequential circuits, under random input sequences. Switching activity is strongly affected by gate delays and for this reason a general delay model is used in estimating switching activity. The method takes into account correlation caused at internal gates in the circuit due to reconvergence of input signals. In sequential circuits, the input sequence applied to the combinational portion of the circuit is highly correlated because some of the inputs to the combinational logic are flip-flop outputs representing the state of the circuit. Methods are presented to probabilistically estimate switching activity in sequential circuits. These methods automatically compute the switching rates and correlations between flip-flop outputs. >

Poker machine communication system

Abstract: A system for controlling the operation of electronically linked gaming machines which enables information to be transferred between machines and from each machine to a control unit. In particular, credits on a machine can be transferred to another machine and the credit state of each machine can be interrogated and adjusted from the central control unit.

What Good is Temporal Logic

Abstract: This was an invited paper. It describes the state of my views on specification and verification at the time. It is notable for introducing the idea of invariance under stuttering and explaining why it’s a vital attribute of a specification logic. It is also one of my better-written papers.

System and method for performing flexible workflow process compensation in a distributed workflow management system

Abstract: A system and method for performing flexible workflow process execution in a distributed workflow management system is described. The distributed workflow management system is formed by a computer network comprising a plurality of computers. Each computer has a processor, memory and input/output facilities. A workflow process management system operates on one or more of the computers to control the computer network in executing the workflow process. The workflow process includes at least one sequence of multiple actions. A plurality of resources is coupled to respective ones of the computers to carry out the multiple actions. A plurality of state machines are stored as computer-operable code in at least one memory and include a plurality of states interconnected by arcs logically forming a directed graph. The workflow management system further includes logic for instantiating each action with one state and logic for executing the logical sequence of the action as state transitions in each state machine.

MOPS: an infrastructure for examining security properties of software

Abstract: We describe a formal approach for finding bugs in security-relevant software and verifying their absence. The idea is as follows: we identify rules of safe programming practice, encode them as safety properties, and verify whether these properties are obeyed. Because manual verification is too expensive, we have built a program analysis tool to automate this process. Our program analysis models the program to be verified as a pushdown automaton, represents the security property as a finite state automaton, and uses model checking techniques to identify whether any state violating the desired security goal is reachable in the program. The major advantages of this approach are that it is sound in verifying the absence of certain classes of vulnerabilities, that it is fully interprocedural, and that it is efficient and scalable. Experience suggests that this approach will be useful in finding a wide range of security vulnerabilities in large programs efficiently.