Automated synthesis of protocol converters with BALM-II

We address the problem of the automatic design of automata to translatebetween different protocols, and we reduce it to the solution of equationsdefined over regular languages and finite automata (FA)/finite state machines(FSMs).The largest solution of the defined language equations includesall protocol converters that solve the problem;this is a strong advantage over computational techniques that deliver only oneor a few solutions, which might lead to suboptimal implementations(e.g., as sequential circuits).Our model is versatile, because it can handle different topologies andconstraints on the solutions.We propose a fully automatic procedure implemented inside a software packageBALM-II which solves language equations.For illustration we show examples of setting up and solving language equationsfor classical protocol mismatch problems, aiming at the design of protocolconverters to interface an alternating-bit (AB) sender and a non-sequenced(NS) receiver.Our automatic converter synthesis procedure yields a complete solutionfor automata and FSMs, and may serve as a core engineto embed into any full-fledged interface synthesis tool.