10.30 a.m.
Counter-Example Guided Fence Insertion under TSO
Mohamed Faouzi Atig
Uppsala University, Sweden.
13-12-12

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Abstract

We consider the reachability problem for concurrent finite-state programs running under the classical TSO memory model. This model allows "write to read" relaxation corresponding to the addition of an unbounded store buffer between each processor and the main memory. We show that the reachability problem for a program under TSO is decidable. Then, we propose a counter-example guided fence insertion procedure. The procedure is augmented by a placement constraint that allows the user to choose places inside the program where fences may be inserted. For a given placement constraint, we automatically infer all minimal sets of fences that ensure correctness. We have implemented a prototype and run it successfully on all standard benchmarks together with several challenging examples that are beyond the applicability of existing methods.

This talk will be based on: (1) POPL'10 paper with Ahmed Bouajjani, Burckhardt and Madanlal Musuvathi, and (2) TACAS'12 paper with Parosh Abdulla, Yu-Fang Chen, Carl Leonardsson and Ahmed Rezine.