TSO to SC via Symbolic Execution

Modern multi-core processors equipped with weak memory models like TSO exhibit executions which – due to store buffers – seemingly reorder program operations. Thus, they deviate from the commonly assumed sequential consistency (SC) semantics. Analysis techniques for concurrent programs consequently need to take reorderings into account. For TSO, this is often accomplished by explicitly modelling store buffers. In this paper, we present an approach for reducing TSO-verification of concurrent programs (with fenced or write-free loops) to SC-verification, thereby being able to reuse standard verification tools. To this end, we transform a given program P into a new program P ′ whose SC-semantics is (bisimulation-) equivalent to the TSO-semantics of P . The transformation proceeds via a symbolic execution of P , however, only with respect to store buffer contents. Out of the thus obtained abstraction of P , we generate the SC program P ′ which can then be the target of standard analysis tools.