We show in this article that some concepts from homotopy theory, in algebraic topology, are relevant for studying concurrent programs. We exhibit a natural semantics of semaphore programs, based on partially ordered topological spaces, which are studied up to "elastic deformation" or homotopy, giving information about important properties of the program, such as deadlocks, unreachables, serializability, essential schedules, etc. In fact, it is not quite ordinary homotopy that has to be used, but rather a "directed homotopy" that does not reverse the flow of time. We show some of the essential differences between ordinary and directed homotopy through examples. We also relate the topological view to a combinatorial view of concurrent programs closer to transition systems, through the notion of a cubical set. Finally we apply some of these concepts to the proof of the safeness of a two-phase protocol, well-known and used in concurrent database theory. We end up with a list of problems from both a mathematical and a computer-scientific point of view.

The usual S5 n epistemic model for a multi-agent system is based on a Kripke frame, which is a graph whose edges are labeled with agents that do not distinguish between two states. We propose to uncover the higher dimensional information implicit in this structure, by considering a dual, simplicial complex model. We use dynamic epistemic logic (DEL) to study how an epistemic simplicial complex model changes after a set of agents communicate with each other. We concentrate on an action model that represents the so-called immediate snapshot communication patterns of asynchronous agents, because it is central to distributed computability (but our setting works for other communication patterns). There are topological invariants preserved from the initial epistemic complex to the one after the action model is applied, which determine the knowledge that the agents gain after communication. Finally, we describe how a distributed task specification can be modeled as a DEL action model, and show that the topological invariants determine whether the task is solvable. We thus provide a bridge between DEL and the topological theory of distributed computability, which studies task solvability in a shared memory or message passing architecture.

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Abstract. Most modern safety-critical control programs, such as those embedded in fly-by-wire control systems, perform a lot of floating-point computations. The well-known pitfalls of IEEE 754 arithmetic make stability and accuracy analyses a requirement for this type of software. This need is traditionally addressed through a combination of testing and sophisticated intellectual analyses, but such a process is both costly and error-prone. FLUCTUAT is a static analyzer developed by CEA-LIST for studying the propagation of rounding errors in C programs. After a long time research collaboration with CEA-LIST on this tool, Airbus is now willing to use FLUCTUAT industrially, in order to automate part of the accuracy analyses of some control programs. In this paper, we present the IEEE 754 standard, the FLUCTUAT tool, the types of codes to be analyzed and the analysis methodology, together with code examples and analysis results.

Abstract. We present a new numerical abstract domain for static analysis of the errors introduced by the approximation by floating-point arithmetic of real numbers computation, by abstract interpretation [3]. This work extends a former domain [4,8], with an implicitly relational domain for the approximation of the floating-point values of variables, based on affine arithmetic [2]. It allows us to analyze non trivial numerical computations, that no other abstract domain we know of can analyze with such precise results, such as linear recursive filters of different orders, Newton methods for solving non-linear equations, polynomial iterations, conjugate gradient algorithms.

Abstract. We define several abstract semantics for the static analysis of finite precision computations, that bound not only the ranges of values taken by numerical variables of a program, but also the difference with the result of the same sequence of operations in an idealized real number semantics. These domains point out with more or less detail (control point, block, function for instance) sources of numerical errors in the program and the way they were propagated by further computations, thus allowing to evaluate not only the rounding error, but also sensitivity to inputs or parameters of the program. We describe two classes of abstractions, a non relational one based on intervals, and a weakly relational one based on parametrized zonotopic abstract domains called affine sets, especially well suited for sensitivity analysis and test generation. These abstract domains are implemented in the Fluctuat static analyzer, and we finally present some experiments.

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A local po-space is a gluing of topological spaces which are equipped with a closed partial ordering representing the time flow. They are used as a formalization of higher dimensional automata (see for instance [6]) which model concurrent systems in computer science. It is known [11] that there are two distinct notions of deformation of higher dimensional automata, "spatial" and "temporal", leaving invariant computer scientific properties like presence or absence of deadlocks. Unfortunately, the formalization of these notions is still unknown in the general case of local po-spaces.We introduce here a particular kind of local po-space, the "globular CW-complexes", for which we formalize these notions of deformations and which are sufficient to formalize higher dimensional automata. The existence of the category of globular CW-complexes was already conjectured in [11].After localizing the category of globular CW-complexes by spatial and temporal deformations, we get a category (the category of dihomotopy types) whose objects up to isomorphism represent exactly the higher dimensional automata up to deformation. Thus globular CW-complexes provide a rigorous mathematical foundation to study from an algebraic topology point of view higher dimensional automata and concurrent computations.