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Guard Automata for the Verification of Safety and Liveness of Distributed Algorithms

Authors Nathalie Bertrand , Bastien Thomas, Josef Widder

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ACM Subject Classification
  • Theory of computation → Verification by model checking
  • Theory of computation → Distributed algorithms
Keywords
  • Verification
  • Distributed algorithms
  • Domain theory

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Abstract

Distributed algorithms typically run over arbitrary many processes and may involve unboundedly many rounds, making the automated verification of their correctness challenging. Building on domain theory, we introduce a framework that abstracts infinite-state distributed systems that represent distributed algorithms into finite-state guard automata. The soundness of the approach corresponds to the Scott-continuity of the abstraction, which relies on the assumption that the distributed algorithms are layered. Guard automata thus enable the verification of safety and liveness properties of distributed algorithms.

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Nathalie Bertrand, Bastien Thomas, and Josef Widder. Guard Automata for the Verification of Safety and Liveness of Distributed Algorithms. In 32nd International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2021). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 203, pp. 15:1-15:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2021) https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2021.15

Author Details

Nathalie Bertrand
  • Université Rennes, Inria, CNRS, IRISA, France
Bastien Thomas
  • Université Rennes, Inria, CNRS, IRISA, France
Josef Widder
  • Informal Systems, Wien, Austria

Funding

This project has received funding from Interchain Foundation (Switzerland).

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