PSync , a domain specific language based on the Heard-Of model
Event details
| Date | 22.12.2015 |
| Hour | 16:15 › 17:15 |
| Speaker | Damien Zufferey |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
Fault-tolerant distributed algorithms play an important role in many critical/high-availability applications. These algorithms are notoriously difficult to implement correctly, due to asynchronous communication and the occurrence of faults, such as the network dropping messages or computers crashing.
We introduce PSync, a domain specific language based on the Heard-Of model, which views asynchronous faulty systems as synchronous ones with an adversarial environment that simulates asynchrony and faults by dropping messages. We define a runtime system for PSync that efficiently executes on asynchronous networks. We formalise the relation between the runtime system and PSync in terms of observational refinement. This high-level synchronous abstraction introduced by PSync simplifies the design and implementation of fault-tolerant distributed algorithms and enables automated formal verification.
We have implemented an embedding of PSync in the Scala programming language with a runtime system for partially synchronous networks. We show the applicability of PSync by implementing several important fault-tolerant distributed algorithms and we compare the implementation of consensus algorithms in PSync against implementations in other languages in terms of code size, runtime efficiency, and verification.
This is joint work with Cezara Dragoi and Tom Henzinger.
Damien Zufferey is a Postdoctoral researcher in Martin Rinard's group at MIT CSAIL since Octorber 2013. Before moving to MIT, he obtained a PhD at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) under supervision of Thomas A. Henzinger in September 2013 and a Master in computer science from EPFL in 2009. He is interested in improving software reliability by developing theoretical models, building analysis tools, and giving the programmer the appropriate language constructs. He is particularly interested in the study of complex concurrent systems. His research lies at the intersection of formal methods and programming languages.
We introduce PSync, a domain specific language based on the Heard-Of model, which views asynchronous faulty systems as synchronous ones with an adversarial environment that simulates asynchrony and faults by dropping messages. We define a runtime system for PSync that efficiently executes on asynchronous networks. We formalise the relation between the runtime system and PSync in terms of observational refinement. This high-level synchronous abstraction introduced by PSync simplifies the design and implementation of fault-tolerant distributed algorithms and enables automated formal verification.
We have implemented an embedding of PSync in the Scala programming language with a runtime system for partially synchronous networks. We show the applicability of PSync by implementing several important fault-tolerant distributed algorithms and we compare the implementation of consensus algorithms in PSync against implementations in other languages in terms of code size, runtime efficiency, and verification.
This is joint work with Cezara Dragoi and Tom Henzinger.
Damien Zufferey is a Postdoctoral researcher in Martin Rinard's group at MIT CSAIL since Octorber 2013. Before moving to MIT, he obtained a PhD at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) under supervision of Thomas A. Henzinger in September 2013 and a Master in computer science from EPFL in 2009. He is interested in improving software reliability by developing theoretical models, building analysis tools, and giving the programmer the appropriate language constructs. He is particularly interested in the study of complex concurrent systems. His research lies at the intersection of formal methods and programming languages.
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Practical information
- Informed public
- Free
- This event is internal
Organizer
- Mikaël Mayer
Contact
- Viktor Kuncak