Probabilistic Input/Output Automata

Probabilistic Input/Ouptut Automata (PIOA) is a model for specification, verification and performance analysis of systems with concurrent, probabilistic and real-time behavior, such as communication protocols and embedded systems. The PIOA model provides a notion of composition, for constructing a PIOA for a composite system from a collection of PIOA representing the components. The analysis method is "compositional", in the sense that it can be applied to a system of PIOA, one component at a time, without ever calculating the full global state space of the system.

The PIOATool we have built, implements our compositional performance analysis methods for PIOA. The tool is best suited for the computation of transient performance measures such as completion probability and expected completion time for PIOA. It can compute results in either exact rational arithmetic or symbolic rational expressions with a single parameter.

For an overview of what PIOA and PIOATool are about, see the following abstract of an invited talk given at CONCUR'00. The talk slides are also available.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants CCR-8902215, CCR-9120995, CCR-9208585, and CCR-9988155, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under grants F49620-93-1-0250DEF and F49620-96-1-0087, and the Army Research Office under Grant DAAD190110003. We gratefully acknowledge the support of these sponsors.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Army Research Office, or other sponsors."