The metatheory of axiomatic weak memory models covers questions like the correctness of compilation mappings from one model to another and the correctness of local program transformations according to a given model---topics usually requiring lengthy human investigation. We show that these questions can be solved by answering a more basic question: "Given two memory models, is one weaker than the other?" Moreover, for a wide class of axiomatic memory models, we show that this basic question can be reduced to a language inclusion problem between regular languages, which is decidable. Similarly, implementing an efficient check for whether an execution graph is consistent according to a given memory model has required non-trivial manual effort. Again, we show that such efficient checks can be derived automatically for a wide class of axiomatic memory models, and that incremental consistency checks can be incorporated in GenMC, a state-of-the-art model checker for concurrent programs. As a result, we get the first time- and space-efficient bounded verifier taking the axiomatic memory model as an input parameter.

@article{paperbot2092,
  title = {Kater: Automating Weak Memory Model Metatheory and Consistency Checking},
  author = {Michalis Kokologiannakis and Ori Lahav and Viktor Vafeiadis},
  journal = {Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages},
  volume = {7},
  number = {POPL},
  year = {2023},
  doi = {10.1145/3571212}
}