Skip to main content

A Pragmatic Approach to Stateful Partial Order Reduction

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Verification, Model Checking, and Abstract Interpretation (VMCAI 2023)

Abstract

Partial order reduction (POR) is a classic technique for dealing with the state explosion problem in model checking of concurrent programs. Theoretical optimality, i.e., avoiding enumerating equivalent interleavings, does not necessarily guarantee optimal overall performance of the model checking algorithm. The computational overhead required to guarantee optimality may by far cancel out any benefits that an algorithm may have from exploring a smaller state space of interleavings. With a focus on overall performance, we propose new algorithms for stateful POR based on the recently proposed source sets, which are less precise but more efficient than the state of the art in practice. We evaluate efficiency using an implementation that extends Java Pathfinder in the context of verifying concurrent data structures.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
eBook
USD 64.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
Softcover Book
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. 1.

    JPF uses hashing for state matching which is theoretically imperfect and can lead to incomplete results on rare occasions.

References

  1. Abdulla, P.A., Aronis, S., Atig, M.F., Jonsson, B., Leonardsson, C., Sagonas, K.: Stateless model checking for TSO and PSO. Acta Inform. 54(8), 789–818 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00236-016-0275-0

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  2. Abdulla, P., Aronis, S., Jonsson, B., Sagonas, K.: Comparing source sets and persistent sets for partial order reduction. In: Aceto, L., Bacci, G., Bacci, G., Ingólfsdóttir, A., Legay, A., Mardare, R. (eds.) Models, Algorithms, Logics and Tools. LNCS, vol. 10460, pp. 516–536. Springer, Cham (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63121-9_26

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  3. Abdulla, P.A., Aronis, S., Jonsson, B., Sagonas, K.: Source sets: a foundation for optimal dynamic partial order reduction. J. ACM 64(4), 25:1–25:49 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1145/3073408

  4. Abdulla, P.A., Atig, M.F., Jonsson, B., Ngo, T.P.: Optimal stateless model checking under the release-acquire semantics. Proc. ACM Program. Lang. 2(OOPSLA), 135:1–135:29 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1145/3276505

  5. Bouajjani, A., Emmi, M.: Bounded phase analysis of message-passing programs. In: Flanagan, C., König, B. (eds.) TACAS 2012. LNCS, vol. 7214, pp. 451–465. Springer, Heidelberg (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28756-5_31

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  6. Cirisci, B., Enea, C., Farzan, A., Mutluergil, S.O.: A pragmatic approach to stateful partial order reduction (2022). https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.11942

  7. Clarke, E.M., Emerson, E.A., Sistla, A.P.: Automatic verification of finite state concurrent systems using temporal logic specifications: a practical approach. In: Wright, J.R., Landweber, L., Demers, A.J., Teitelbaum, T. (eds.) Conference Record of the Tenth Annual ACM Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, Austin, Texas, USA, January 1983, pp. 117–126. ACM Press (1983). https://doi.org/10.1145/567067.567080

  8. Clarke, E.M., Grumberg, O., Minea, M., Peled, D.A.: State space reduction using partial order techniques. Int. J. Softw. Tools Technol. Transf. 2(3), 279–287 (1999)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Emmi, M., Enea, C.: Violat: generating tests of observational refinement for concurrent objects. In: Dillig, I., Tasiran, S. (eds.) CAV 2019, Part II. LNCS, vol. 11562, pp. 534–546. Springer, Cham (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25543-5_30

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  10. Emmi, M., Qadeer, S., Rakamaric, Z.: Delay-bounded scheduling. In: Ball, T., Sagiv, M. (eds.) Proceedings of the 38th ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, POPL 2011, Austin, TX, USA, 26–28 January 2011, pp. 411–422. ACM (2011). https://doi.org/10.1145/1926385.1926432

  11. Farzan, A., Vandikas, A.: Automated hypersafety verification. In: Dillig, I., Tasiran, S. (eds.) CAV 2019, Part I. LNCS, vol. 11561, pp. 200–218. Springer, Cham (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25540-4_11

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  12. Farzan, A., Vandikas, A.: Reductions for safety proofs. Proc. ACM Program. Lang. 4(POPL), 13:1–13:28 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1145/3371081

  13. Flanagan, C., Godefroid, P.: Dynamic partial-order reduction for model checking software. In: Palsberg, J., Abadi, M. (eds.) Proceedings of the 32nd ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, POPL 2005, Long Beach, California, USA, 12–14 January 2005, pp. 110–121. ACM (2005). https://doi.org/10.1145/1040305.1040315

  14. Garg, P., Neider, D., Madhusudan, P., Roth, D.: Learning invariants using decision trees and implication counterexamples. In: Bodík, R., Majumdar, R. (eds.) Proceedings of the 43rd Annual ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, POPL 2016, St. Petersburg, FL, USA, 20–22 January 2016, pp. 499–512. ACM (2016). https://doi.org/10.1145/2837614.2837664

  15. Godefroid, P.: Using partial orders to improve automatic verification methods. In: Clarke, E.M., Kurshan, R.P. (eds.) Computer-Aided Verification, Proceedings of a DIMACS Workshop 1990, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA, 18–21 June 1990. DIMACS Series in Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science, vol. 3, pp. 321–340. DIMACS/AMS (1990). https://doi.org/10.1090/dimacs/003/21

  16. Godefroid, P.: Partial-Order Methods for the Verification of Concurrent Systems - An Approach to the State-Explosion Problem. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 1032. Springer, Heidelberg (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-60761-7_31

  17. Godefroid, P.: Model checking for programming languages using verisoft. In: Lee, P., Henglein, F., Jones, N.D. (eds.) Conference Record of POPL 1997: The 24th ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, Papers Presented at the Symposium, Paris, France, 15–17 January 1997, pp. 174–186. ACM Press (1997). https://doi.org/10.1145/263699.263717

  18. Godefroid, P., Holzmann, G.J., Pirottin, D.: State-space caching revisited. Formal Methods Syst. Des. 7(3), 227–241 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01384077

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Godefroid, P., Pirottin, D.: Refining dependencies improves partial-order verification methods (extended abstract). In: Courcoubetis, C. (ed.) CAV 1993. LNCS, vol. 697, pp. 438–449. Springer, Heidelberg (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-56922-7_36

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  20. Godefroid, P., Wolper, P.: Using partial orders for the efficient verification of deadlock freedom and safety properties. Formal Methods Syst. Des. 2(2), 149–164 (1993)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Gramoli, V.: More than you ever wanted to know about synchronization: synchrobench, measuring the impact of the synchronization on concurrent algorithms. In: Cohen, A., Grove, D. (eds.) Proceedings of the 20th ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming, PPoPP 2015, San Francisco, CA, USA, 7–11 February 2015, pp. 1–10. ACM (2015). https://doi.org/10.1145/2688500.2688501

  22. He, J., Hoare, C.A.R., Sanders, J.W.: Data refinement refined resume. In: Robinet, B., Wilhelm, R. (eds.) ESOP 1986. LNCS, vol. 213, pp. 187–196. Springer, Heidelberg (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-16442-1_14

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  23. Hoare, C.A.R., He, J., Sanders, J.W.: Prespecification in data refinement. Inf. Process. Lett. 25(2), 71–76 (1987)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  24. Holzmann, G.J., Peled, D.A.: An improvement in formal verification. In: Hogrefe, D., Leue, S. (eds.) Formal Description Techniques VII, Proceedings of the 7th IFIP WG6.1 International Conference on Formal Description Techniques, Berne, Switzerland, 1994. IFIP Conference Proceedings, vol. 6, pp. 197–211. Chapman & Hall (1994)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Katz, S., Peled, D.A.: Verification of distributed programs using representative interleaving sequences. Distrib. Comput. 6(2), 107–120 (1992)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  26. Kokologiannakis, M., Vafeiadis, V.: HMC: model checking for hardware memory models. In: Larus, J.R., Ceze, L., Strauss, K. (eds.) ASPLOS 2020: Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems, Lausanne, Switzerland, 16–20 March 2020, pp. 1157–1171. ACM (2020). https://doi.org/10.1145/3373376.3378480

  27. Kokologiannakis, M., Vafeiadis, V.: GenMC: a model checker for weak memory models. In: Silva, A., Leino, K.R.M. (eds.) CAV 2021, Part I. LNCS, vol. 12759, pp. 427–440. Springer, Cham (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81685-8_20

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  28. Lauterburg, S., Karmani, R.K., Marinov, D., Agha, G.: Evaluating ordering heuristics for dynamic partial-order reduction techniques. In: Rosenblum, D.S., Taentzer, G. (eds.) FASE 2010. LNCS, vol. 6013, pp. 308–322. Springer, Heidelberg (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-12029-9_22

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  29. Liskov, B., Wing, J.M.: A behavioral notion of subtyping. ACM Trans. Program. Lang. Syst. 16(6), 1811–1841 (1994)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Mazurkiewicz, A.: Trace theory. In: Brauer, W., Reisig, W., Rozenberg, G. (eds.) ACPN 1986, Part II. LNCS, vol. 255, pp. 278–324. Springer, Heidelberg (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-17906-2_30

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  31. Miltner, A., Padhi, S., Millstein, T.D., Walker, D.: Data-driven inference of representation invariants. In: Donaldson, A.F., Torlak, E. (eds.) Proceedings of the 41st ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation, PLDI 2020, London, UK, 15–20 June 2020, pp. 1–15. ACM (2020). https://doi.org/10.1145/3385412.3385967

  32. Musuvathi, M., Qadeer, S.: Iterative context bounding for systematic testing of multithreaded programs. In: Ferrante, J., McKinley, K.S. (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN 2007 Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation, San Diego, California, USA, 10–13 June 2007, pp. 446–455. ACM (2007). https://doi.org/10.1145/1250734.1250785

  33. Neele, T., Wijs, A., Bošnački, D., van de Pol, J.: Partial-order reduction for GPU model checking. In: Artho, C., Legay, A., Peled, D. (eds.) ATVA 2016. LNCS, vol. 9938, pp. 357–374. Springer, Cham (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46520-3_23

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  34. Peled, D.: All from one, one for all: on model checking using representatives. In: Courcoubetis, C. (ed.) CAV 1993. LNCS, vol. 697, pp. 409–423. Springer, Heidelberg (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-56922-7_34

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  35. Plotkin, G.D.: LCF considered as a programming language. Theor. Comput. Sci. 5(3), 223–255 (1977)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  36. Qadeer, S., Rehof, J.: Context-bounded model checking of concurrent software. In: Halbwachs, N., Zuck, L.D. (eds.) TACAS 2005. LNCS, vol. 3440, pp. 93–107. Springer, Heidelberg (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-31980-1_7

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  37. Queille, J.P., Sifakis, J.: Specification and verification of concurrent systems in CESAR. In: Dezani-Ciancaglini, M., Montanari, U. (eds.) Programming 1982. LNCS, vol. 137, pp. 337–351. Springer, Heidelberg (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-11494-7_22

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  38. Sharma, R., Aiken, A.: From invariant checking to invariant inference using randomized search. Formal Methods Syst. Des. 48(3), 235–256 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  39. Tasharofi, S., Karmani, R.K., Lauterburg, S., Legay, A., Marinov, D., Agha, G.: TransDPOR: a novel dynamic partial-order reduction technique for testing actor programs. In: Giese, H., Rosu, G. (eds.) FMOODS/FORTE -2012. LNCS, vol. 7273, pp. 219–234. Springer, Heidelberg (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-30793-5_14

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  40. Valmari, A.: Stubborn sets for reduced state space generation. In: Rozenberg, G. (ed.) ICATPN 1989. LNCS, vol. 483, pp. 491–515. Springer, Heidelberg (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-53863-1_36

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  41. Visser, W., Pasareanu, C.S., Khurshid, S.: Test input generation with java pathfinder. In: Avrunin, G.S., Rothermel, G. (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM/SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis, ISSTA 2004, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, 11–14 July 2004, pp. 97–107. ACM (2004). https://doi.org/10.1145/1007512.1007526

  42. Yang, Y., Chen, X., Gopalakrishnan, G., Kirby, R.M.: Efficient stateful dynamic partial order reduction. In: Havelund, K., Majumdar, R., Palsberg, J. (eds.) SPIN 2008. LNCS, vol. 5156, pp. 288–305. Springer, Heidelberg (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85114-1_20

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  43. Yi, X., Wang, J., Yang, X.: Stateful dynamic partial-order reduction. In: Liu, Z., He, J. (eds.) ICFEM 2006. LNCS, vol. 4260, pp. 149–167. Springer, Heidelberg (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/11901433_9

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Berk Cirisci .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Cirisci, B., Enea, C., Farzan, A., Mutluergil, S.O. (2023). A Pragmatic Approach to Stateful Partial Order Reduction. In: Dragoi, C., Emmi, M., Wang, J. (eds) Verification, Model Checking, and Abstract Interpretation. VMCAI 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13881. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24950-1_7

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24950-1_7

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-24949-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-24950-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics