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Complexity Issues in Automated Synthesis of Failsafe Fault-Tolerance
July-September 2005 (vol. 2 no. 3)
pp. 201-215
ASCII Text
x 
 
Sandeep S. Kulkarni, Ali Ebnenasir, "Complexity Issues in Automated Synthesis of Failsafe Fault-Tolerance," IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 201-215, July-September, 2005.
 
 
BibTex
x
 
@article{ 10.1109/TDSC.2005.29,
author = {Sandeep S. Kulkarni and Ali Ebnenasir},
title = {Complexity Issues in Automated Synthesis of Failsafe Fault-Tolerance},
journal ={IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing},
volume = {2},
number = {3},
issn = {1545-5971},
year = {2005},
pages = {201-215},
doi = {http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/TDSC.2005.29},
publisher = {IEEE Computer Society},
address = {Los Alamitos, CA, USA},
}
 
 
RefWorks Procite/RefMan/Endnote
x 
 
TY - JOUR
JO - IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing
TI - Complexity Issues in Automated Synthesis of Failsafe Fault-Tolerance
IS - 3
SN - 1545-5971
SP201
EP215
EPD - 201-215
A1 - Sandeep S. Kulkarni,
A1 - Ali Ebnenasir,
PY - 2005
KW - Index Terms- Fault-tolerance
KW - automatic addition of fault-tolerance
KW - formal methods
KW - program synthesis
KW - distributed programs.
VL - 2
JA - IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing
ER -
 
We focus on the problem of synthesizing failsafe fault-tolerance where fault-tolerance is added to an existing (fault-intolerant) program. A failsafe fault-tolerant program satisfies its specification (including safety and liveness) in the absence of faults. However, in the presence of faults, it satisfies its safety specification. We present a somewhat unexpected result that, in general, the problem of synthesizing failsafe fault-tolerant distributed programs from their fault-intolerant version is NP-complete in the state space of the program. We also identify a class of specifications, monotonic specifications, and a class of programs, monotonic programs, for which the synthesis of failsafe fault-tolerance can be done in polynomial time (in program state space). As an illustration, we show that the monotonicity restrictions are met for commonly encountered problems, such as Byzantine agreement, distributed consensus, and atomic commitment. Furthermore, we evaluate the role of these restrictions in the complexity of synthesizing failsafe fault-tolerance. Specifically, we prove that if only one of these conditions is satisfied, the synthesis of failsafe fault-tolerance is still NP-complete. Finally, we demonstrate the application of monotonicity property in enhancing the fault-tolerance of (distributed) nonmasking fault-tolerant programs to masking.

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Index Terms:
Index Terms- Fault-tolerance, automatic addition of fault-tolerance, formal methods, program synthesis, distributed programs.
Citation:
Sandeep S. Kulkarni, Ali Ebnenasir, "Complexity Issues in Automated Synthesis of Failsafe Fault-Tolerance," IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 201-215, July-Sept. 2005, doi:10.1109/TDSC.2005.29
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