Knowledge-Based Synthesis of Distributed Systems Using Event Structures

To produce a program guaranteed to satisfy a given specification one cansynthesize it from a formal constructive proof that a computation satisfyingthat specification exists. This process is particularly effective if thespecifications are written in a high-level language that makes it easy fordesigners to specify their goals. We consider a high-level specificationlanguage that results from adding knowledge to a fragment of Nuprl specificallytailored for specifying distributed protocols, called event theory. We thenshow how high-level knowledge-based programs can be synthesized from theknowledge-based specifications using a proof development system such as Nuprl.Methods of Halpern and Zuck then apply to convert these knowledge-basedprotocols to ordinary protocols. These methods can be expressed as heuristictransformation tactics in Nuprl.Comment: A preliminary version of this paper appeared in Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Logic for Programming, Artificial Intelligence, and Reasoning LPAR 2004, pp. 449-46