PROBMELA: a modeling language for communicating probabilistic processes

Abstract

Building automated tools to address the analysis of reactive probabilistic systems requires a simple, but expressive input language with a formal semantics based on a probabilistic operational model that can serve as starting point for verification algorithms. We introduce for probabilistic parallel programs with shared variables, message passing via synchronous and (perfect or lossy) fifo channels and atomic regions and provide a structured operational semantics. Applied to finite-state systems, the semantics can serve as basis for the algorithmic generation of a Markov decision process that models the stepwise behavior of the given system.