A Static Analysis Framework for Livelock Freedom in CSP

In a process algebra with hiding and recursion it is possible to create processes which compute internally without ever communicating with their environment. Such pro- cesses are said to diverge or livelock. In this paper we show how it is possible to con- servatively classify processes as livelock-free through a static analysis of their syntax. In particular, we present a collection of rules, based on the inductive structure of terms, which guarantee livelock-freedom of the denoted process. This gives rise to an algorithm which conservatively ags processes that can potentially livelock. We illustrate our approach by applying both BDD-based and SAT-based implementations of our algorithm to a range of benchmarks, and show that our technique in general substantially outperforms the model checker FDR whilst exhibiting a low rate of inconclusive results.

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