Concurrency Analysis Tool Suite (CATS)


  1. Name:
    Concurrency Analysis Tool Suite (CATS)

  2. Source:
    University of California, Irvine (UCI) Arcadia project

  3. Brief description:
    CATS is a set of tools for statically analyzing concurrent programs. The analyses are performed on the task interaction concurrency graph (TICG), an enhanced reachability graph. CATS includes a TICG builder, deadlock checker, model checker for verifying temporal logic assertions, and support tools such as a task interaction graph viewer.

  4. Evaluation against applicable general dimensions:

    1. Availability: commercial/licensed/public domain
      Cost-free license from UCI Arcadia project.

    2. Cost:
      Free if obtained over the Internet, media charge for magnetic tape.

    3. Degree of support/maturity/testing/usage:
      Limited support; used within the project to analyze some large concurrent programs, including the Chiron UIMS.

    4. Speed:
      Execution time for the dining philosophers problem:
      
      Problem   TICG     TICG     SPARC2 CPU
       size     States   Edges     seconds
      -------  -------  -------   ----------
         2          8       11         6
         8       6560    34985        28
         9      19682   118090       339
        10      59048   393651      9124

    5. Computing platforms:
      Sun 4

    6. Language compatibilities:
      Suitable for programs using Ada-style rendezvous; tasking structure is expressed using task interaction graphs (TIGs) which are now constructed manually, though a TIG extractor for Ada code is under development.

    7. Footprint:
      1. Entire distribution: 40 MB
      Includes sources, Verdix/SunAda libraries, executables, examples, and documentation

    8. Openness/integrability/source availability:
      Source code (Ada) provided.

    9. Extensibility:
      Standalone tool suite designed for extensibility, source code provided.

    10. Pedigree: ARPA developed?
      Developed under ARPA Arcadia program.

  5. Contact person(s)
    Professor Richard N. Taylor
    Department of Information and Computer Science (ICS)
    University of California
    Irvine, CA 92717-3425
    taylor@ics.uci.edu
    (714) 824-6429
    (714) 824-4056 - fax

  6. Pointers to literature, demos, etc.:
    Michal Young, Richard N. Taylor, Kari Forester, and Debra Brodbeck. Integrated concurrency analysis in a software development environment. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGSOFT '89 Third Symposium on Software Testing, Analysis, and Verification (TAV3), pages 200-209, Key West, Florida, December 1989. Published as ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes 14 (8).


The Arcadia Project <arcadia-www@ics.uci.edu>
Last modified: Wed Nov 30 14:40:38 1994