Ahmed Bouajjani,
On the Verification Problem for Weak Memory Models
We address the verification problem of finite-state concurrent programs
running under weak memory models. These models capture
the reordering of program (read and write) operations done by modern
multi-processor architectures for performance. The verification
problem we study is crucial for the correctness of concurrency libraries
and other performance-critical system services employing
lock-free synchronization, as well as for the correctness of compiler
backends that generate code targeted to run on such architectures.
We consider in this paper combinations of three well-known
program order relaxations. We consider first the ˇ§write to readˇ¨
relaxation, which corresponds to the TSO (Total Store Ordering)
model. This relaxation is used in most hardware architectures available
today. Then, we consider models obtained by adding either (1)
the ˇ§write to writeˇ¨ relaxation, leading to a model which is essentially
PSO (Partial Store Ordering), or (2) the ˇ§read to read/writeˇ¨
relaxation, or (3) both of them, as it is done in the RMO (Relaxed
Memory Ordering) model for instance.
We define abstract operational models for these weak memory
models based on state machines with (potentially unbounded) FIFO
buffers, and we investigate the decidability of their reachability and
their repeated reachability problems.
We prove that the reachability problem is decidable for the TSO
model, as well as for its extension with ˇ§write to writeˇ¨ relaxation
(PSO). Furthermore, we prove that the reachability problem
becomes undecidable when the ˇ§read to read/writeˇ¨ relaxation is
added to either of these two memory models, and we give a condition
under which this addition preserves the decidability of the
reachability problem. We show also that the repeated reachability
problem is undecidable for all the considered memory models.