Aimee's Study Notes

It is updated automatically after each commit to the org-notes repo. It was last updated on Oct 09, 2021 05:00 UTC.

This page was created/modified in commit ffafb8f "search & change tags" on 2020-12-06.

# State Machines

categories: hacking

tags: cs state

## State machines

Finite-state machine

The finite-state machine has less computational power than some other models of computation such as the Turing machine.[3] The computational power distinction means there are computational tasks that a Turing machine can do but an FSM cannot. This is because an FSM’s memory is limited by the number of states it has.

Finite-state machines are a class of automata studied in automata theory and the theory of computation. In computer science, finite-state machines are widely used in modeling of application behavior, design of hardware digital systems, software engineering, compilers, network protocols, and the study of computation and languages.

State machine replication

For the subsequent discussion a State Machine will be defined as the following tuple of values

• A set of States
• A set of Inputs
• A set of Outputs
• A transition function (Input × State → State)
• An output function (Input × State → Output)
• A distinguished State called Start.

A State Machine begins at the State labeled Start. Each Input received is passed through the transition and output function to produce a new State and an Output. The State is held stable until a new Input is received, while the Output is communicated to the appropriate receiver.

## Consensus

Consensus (computer science)

## Turing completeness

Turing completeness

## Oracle

Oracle machine

An oracle machine can be conceived as a Turing machine connected to an oracle. The oracle, in this context, is an entity capable of solving some problem, which for example may be a decision problem or a function problem. The problem does not have to be computable; the oracle is not assumed to be a Turing machine or computer program. The oracle is simply a “black box” that is able to produce a solution for any instance of a given computational problem.

In cryptography, oracles are used to make arguments for the security of cryptographic protocols where a hash function is used. A security reduction for the protocol is given in the case where, instead of a hash function, a random oracle answers each query randomly but consistently; the oracle is assumed to be available to all parties including the attacker, as the hash function is. Such a proof shows that unless the attacker solves the hard problem at the heart of the security reduction, they must make use of some interesting property of the hash function to break the protocol; they cannot treat the hash function as a black box (i.e., as a random oracle).

This site is generated with ox-hugo for Emacs/Org-mode + hugo-bare-min-theme [Aimee's Study Notes]