Symbolic Implementation of Connectors in BIP

TL;DR

This paper introduces a symbolic implementation of the BIP framework's execution model, significantly improving performance by reducing overhead in interaction computation through boolean representations and BDDs.

Contribution

It presents a novel symbolic approach for BIP interaction computation, replacing enumerative methods with boolean representations to enhance efficiency.

Findings

Reduces execution overhead in BIP by using symbolic methods.

Employs BDDs for efficient boolean representation of components and connectors.

Demonstrates significant performance improvements over traditional enumeration approaches.

Abstract

BIP is a component framework for constructing systems by superposing three layers of modeling: Behavior, Interaction, and Priority. Behavior is represented by labeled transition systems communicating through ports. Interactions are sets of ports. A synchronization between components is possible through the interactions specified by a set of connectors. When several interactions are possible, priorities allow to restrict the non-determinism by choosing an interaction, which is maximal according to some given strict partial order. The BIP component framework has been implemented in a language and a tool-set. The execution of a BIP program is driven by a dedicated engine, which has access to the set of connectors and priority model of the program. A key performance issue is the computation of the set of possible interactions of the BIP program from a given state. Currently, the choice of the interaction to be executed involves a costly exploration of enumerative representations for connectors. This leads to a considerable overhead in execution times. In this paper, we propose a symbolic implementation of the execution model of BIP, which drastically reduces this overhead. The symbolic implementation is based on computing boolean representation for components, connectors, and priorities with an existing BDD package.