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How to Synchronize the Heads of a Multitape Automaton

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Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNTCS,volume 7381)

Abstract

Given an n-tape automaton M with a one-way read-only head per tape and a right end marker $ on each tape, we say that M is aligned or 0-synchronized (or simply, synchronized) if for every n-tuple x = (x 1, …, x n ) that is accepted, there is a computation on x such that at any time during the computation, all heads, except those that have reached the end marker, are on the same position. When a head reaches the marker, it can no longer move. As usual, an n-tuple x = (x 1, …, x n ) is accepted if M eventually reaches the configuration where all n heads are on $ in an accepting state. In two recent papers, we looked at the problem of deciding, given an n-tape automaton of a given type, whether there exists an equivalent synchronized n-tape automaton of the same type. In this paper, we exhibit various classes of multitape automata which can(not) be converted to equivalent synchronized multitape automata.

Keywords

  • multitape automata
  • aligned
  • synchronized
  • semilinear
  • decidable
  • undecidable
  • 1-reversal counters
  • reversal-bounded counters

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© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Ibarra, O.H., Tran, N.Q. (2012). How to Synchronize the Heads of a Multitape Automaton. In: Moreira, N., Reis, R. (eds) Implementation and Application of Automata. CIAA 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7381. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31606-7_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31606-7_17

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-31605-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-31606-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)