On the Almost-Sure Termination of Probabilistic Counter Programs

Abstract

Abstract This paper introduces k -d PCPs – the class of probabilistic counter programs with $$k \in \mathbb {N}$$ k ∈ N counter variables inducing possibly infinite-state Markov chains. We show that the universal (positive) almost-sure termination problem is undecidable for k -d PCPs in general, yet decidable for 1-d PCPs. We present an efficient decision procedure for the latter leveraging the technique of Markov chain finitization . Moreover, we identify several classes of k -d PCPs that are reducible to 1-d PCPs – thus their termination properties can be inferred automatically. Experiments demonstrate that our decision procedure can certify (positive) almost-sure termination – without resorting to invariants or supermartingales – of non-trivial probabilistic programs beyond the scope of existing tools.