Parallel algorithms for reducing derivation time of distinguishing experiments for nondeterministic finite state machines
Khaled El‐Fakih, Gerassimos Barlas, Mustafa Imran Ali, Nina Vladimirovna Yevtushenko · International Journal of Parallel Emergent and Distributed Systems · 2017
Many approaches have been proposed for deriving tests from finite state machine (FSM) specifications with respect to some established coverage criteria. A fundamental core problem in FSM-based testing relates to the derivation of input sequences that can distinguish states of an FSM specification, aka distinguishing sequences. A major effort in the construction of these sequences is based on the derivation of a successors search-tree labeled by sets of pairs of states of the given machine. We aim at reducing the time associated with such constructions through the use of state-of-the-art parallel technologies. Namely, we propose a parallel algorithm that we implement and evaluate on multicore CPUs and on many-core GPUs. We evaluate two alternative GPU implementations that use the CUDA and Thrust software platforms and a network of workstations based solution. The latter sports a workload partitioning based on Divisible Load Theory. A rigorous set of experiments highlights the differences of the proposed implementations in terms of execution time and speedup.