Papers by Zaid Al-zobaidi
Automata representing game-semantic models of programs are meant to operate in environments whose... more Automata representing game-semantic models of programs are meant to operate in environments whose input-output behaviour is constrained by the rules of a game. This can lead to a notion of equivalence between states which is weaker than the conventional notion of bisimulation, since not all actions are available to the environment. An environment which attempts to break the rules of the game is, effectively, mounting a low-level attack against a system. In this paper we show how (and why) to enforce game rules in games-based hardware synthesis and how to use this weaker notion of equivalence, called coherent equivalence, to aggressively minimise automata.

Automata minimisation is considered as one of the key computational resources that drive the cost... more Automata minimisation is considered as one of the key computational resources that drive the cost of computation. Most of the conventional minimisation techniques are based on the notion of bisimulation to determine equivalent states which can be identified. Although minimisation of automata has been an established topic of research, the optimisation of automata works in constrained environments is a novel idea which we will examine in this dissertation, along with a motivating, non-trivial application to efficient tamper-proof hardware compilation. This thesis introduces a new notion of equivalence, coherent equivalence, between states of a transducer. It is weaker than the usual notions of bisimulation, so it leads to more states being identified as equivalent. This new equivalence relation can be utilised to aggressively optimise transducers by reducing the number of states, a technique which we call coherent minimisation. We note that the coherent minimisation always outperforms...
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Papers by Zaid Al-zobaidi