Ciardo, G., Lüttgen, G. and Miner, A.S. (2007) Exploiting interleaving semantics in symbolic state-space generation. Formal Methods in System Design, 31 (1). pp. 63-100. ISSN 0925-9856
Abstract
Symbolic techniques based on Binary Decision Diagrams (BDDs) are widely employed for reasoning about temporal properties of hardware circuits and synchronous controllers. However, they often perform poorly when dealing with the huge state spaces underlying systems based on interleaving semantics, such as communications protocols and distributed software, which are composed of independently acting subsystems that communicate via shared events. This article shows that the efficiency of state-space exploration techniques using decision diagrams can be drastically improved by exploiting the interleaving semantics underlying many event-based and component-based system models. A new algorithm for symbolically generating state spaces is presented that (i) encodes a model’s state vectors with Multi–valued Decision Diagrams (MDDs) rather than flattening them into BDDs and (ii) partitions the model’s Kronecker–consistent next–state function by event and subsystem, thus enabling multiple lightweight next–state transformations rather than a single heavyweight one. Together, this paves the way for a novel iteration order, called saturation, which replaces the breadth–first search order of traditional algorithms. The resulting saturation algorithm is implemented in the tool SMART, and experimental studies show that it is often several orders of magnitude better in terms of time efficiency, final memory consumption, and peak memory consumption than existing symbolic algorithms.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Keywords: | Symbolic state-space exploration - Interleaving semantics - Decision diagrams - Kronecker algebra |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of York |
Academic Units: | The University of York > Faculty of Sciences (York) > Computer Science (York) |
Depositing User: | York RAE Import |
Date Deposited: | 06 Aug 2009 13:00 |
Last Modified: | 06 Aug 2009 13:00 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10703-006-0033-y |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Science + Business Media |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s10703-006-0033-y |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:6158 |