Tech Talk: Roll Your Own Test Bed for Embedded Real-Time Protocols: A Haskell Experience

  • Date  Time
  • Speaker
  • Location

The October 6th Galois Tech Talk will be delivered by Lee Pike, titled Roll Your Own Test Bed for Embedded Real-Time Protocols: A Haskell Experience[Note: Lee has recently presented this talk at the Haskell Symposium’09 in Edinburgh. Further info and downloadable artifacts are available at his personal web-site.]

  • Date: Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
  • Time: 10:30am – 11:30am
  • Location: Galois, Inc.421 SW 6th Ave. Suite 300(3rd floor of the Commonwealth Building)Portland, OR 97204

Abstract: We present by example a new application domain for functional languages: emulators for embedded real-time protocols. As a case-study, we implement a simple emulator for the Biphase Mark Protocol, a physical-layer network protocol in Haskell. The surprising result is that a pure functional language with no built-in notion of time is extremely well-suited for constructing such emulators. Furthermore, we use Haskell’s property-checker QuickCheck to automatically generate real-time parameters for simulation. We also describe a novel use of QuickCheck as a probability calculator for reliability analysis. Bio: Lee Pike is a member of the technical staff at Galois. Previously, he was a research scientist with the NASA Langley Formal Methods Group, primarily involved in the SPIDER project. His research interests include applying formal methods to safety-critical and security-critical applications, with a focus on industrial-scale endeavors.


Galois has been holding weekly technical seminars for several years on topics from functional programming, formal methods, compiler and language design, to cryptography, and operating system construction, with talks by many figures from the programming language and formal methods communities. The talks are open and free. An RSVP is not required, but feel free to contact the organizer with questions and comments.