The following technical report is available from
http://aib.informatik.rwth-aachen.de:
A New Algorithm for Finding Trees with Many Leaves
Joachim Kneis, Alexander Langer, Peter Rossmanith
AIB 2008-15
We present an algorithm that finds trees with at least k leaves in
undirected and directed graphs. These problems are known as Maximum
Leaf Spanning Tree for undirected graphs, and, respectively, Directed
Maximum Leaf Out-Tree and Directed Maximum Leaf Spanning Out-Tree in
the case of directed graphs.
The run time of our algorithm is O(poly(|V|) + 4^k k^2) on undirected
graphs, and O(4^k |V| |E|) on directed graphs. Currently, the fastest
algorithms for these problems have run times of O(poly(n) + 6.75^k
poly(k)) and 2^{O(k log k)} poly(n), respectively.
The following technical report is available from
http://aib.informatik.rwth-aachen.de:
Model Checking Software for Microcontrollers
Bastian Schlich
AIB 2008-14
Software of microcontrollers is getting more and more complex. It is
mandatory to extensively analyze their software as errors can lead to
severe failures or cause high costs. Model checking is a formal method
used to verify whether a system satisfies certain properties.
This thesis describes a new approach for model checking software for
microcontrollers. In this approach, assembly code is used for model
checking instead of an intermediate representation such as C code.
The development of [MC]SQUARE, which is a microcontroller assembly code
model checker implementing this approach, is detailed. [mc]square has
a modular architecture to cope with the hardware dependency of this
approach. The single steps of the model checking process are divided
into separate packages. The creation of the states is conducted by a
specific simulator, which is the only hardware-dependent package. Within
the simulator, the different microcontrollers are modeled accurately.
This work describes the modeling of the ATMEL ATmega16 microcontroller
and details implemented abstraction techniques, which are used to tackle
the state-explosion problem. These abstraction techniques include lazy
interrupt evaluation, lazy stack evaluation, delayed nondeterminism,
dead variable reduction, and path reduction. Delayed nondeterminism
introduces symbolic states, which represent a set of states, into
[MC]SQUARE while still explicit model checking techniques are used.
Thus, we successfully combined explicit and symbolic model checking
techniques.
A formal model of the simulator, which we developed to prove the
correctness of abstraction techniques, is described. In this work, the
formal model is used to show the correctness of delayed nondeterminism.
To show the applicability of the approach, two case studies are
described. In these case studies, we used programs of different sizes.
All these programs were created by students in lab courses, during
diploma theses, or in exercises without the intention to use them for
model checking.
The following technical report is available from
http://aib.informatik.rwth-aachen.de:
Improving Context-Sensitive Dependency Pairs
Beatriz Alarcón, Fabian Emmes, Carsten Fuhs, Jürgen Giesl, Raúl
Gutierrez, Salvador Lucas, Peter Schneider-Kamp, René Thiemann
AIB 2008-13
Context-sensitive dependency pairs (CS-DPs) are currently the most
powerful method for automated termination analysis of context- sensitive
rewriting. However, compared to DPs for ordinary rewriting, CS-DPs suffer
from two main drawbacks: (a) CS-DPs can be collapsing. This complicates
the handling of CS-DPs and makes them less powerful in practice. (b)
There does not exist a "DP framework" for CS-DPs which would allow to
apply them in a flexible and modular way. This paper solves drawback
(a) by introducing a new definition of CS-DPs. With our definition,
CS-DPs are always non-collapsing and thus, they can be handled like
ordinary DPs. This allows us to solve drawback (b) as well, i.e., we
extend the existing DP framework for ordinary DPs to context- sensitive
rewriting. We implemented our results in the tool AProVE and successfully
evaluated them on a large collection of examples.
The following technical report is available from
http://aib.informatik.rwth-aachen.de:
Abstraction for stochastic systems by Erlang's method of stages
Joost-Pieter Katoen, Daniel Klink, Martin Leucker, Verena Wolf
AIB 2008-12
This paper proposes a novel abstraction technique based on Erlang's
method of stages for continuous-time Markov chains (CTMCs). As abstract
models Erlang-k interval processes are proposed where state residence
times are governed by Poisson processes and transition probabilities
are specified by intervals. We provide a three-valued semantics of CSL
(Continuous Stochastic Logic) for Erlang-k interval processes, and show
that both affirmative and negative verification results are preserved
by our abstraction. The feasibility of our technique is demonstrated
by a quantitative analysis of an enzyme-catalyzed substrate conversion,
a well-known case study from biochemistry.
The following technical report is available from
http://aib.informatik.rwth-aachen.de:
Fast Convergence of Routing Games with Splittable Flows
George B. Mertzios
AIB 2008-11
In this paper we investigate the splittable routing game in a
series-parallel network with two selfish players. Every player wishes
to route optimally, i.e. at minimum cost, an individual flow demand
from the source to the destination, giving rise to a non-cooperative
game. We allow a player to split his flow along any number of paths.
One of the fundamental questions in this model is the convergence of
the best response dynamics to a Nash equilibrium, as well as the time
of convergence. We prove that this game converges indeed to a Nash
equilibrium in a logarithmic number of steps. Our results hold for
increasing and convex player-specific latency functions. Finally,
we prove that our analysis on the convergence time is tight for affine
latency functions.