Bus Protocols: MSC-Based Specifications and Translation into Program of Verification Tool for Formal Verification

TL;DR

This paper presents a method to specify bus protocols using Message Sequence Charts (MSCs), translate these specifications into SMV programs, and verify protocol properties automatically, demonstrated on the AMBA bus protocol.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to specify bus protocols with MSCs and provides a translation tool into SMV for formal verification, including a case study on the AMBA protocol.

Findings

Successful translation of MSC specifications into SMV programs

Automatic verification of bus protocol properties using the generated SMV models

Effective use of MSCs for formal verification of system protocols

Abstract

Message Sequence Charts (MSCs) are an appealing visual formalism mainly used in the early stages of system design to capture the system requirements. However, if we move towards an implementation, an executable specifications related in some fashion to the MSC-based requirements must be obtained. The MSCs can be used effectively to specify the bus protocol in the way where high-level transition systems is used to capture the control flow of the system components of the protocol and MSCs to describe the non-atomic component interactions. This system of specification is amenable to formal verification. In this paper, we present the way how we can specify the bus protocols using MSCs and how these specifications can be translated into program of verification tool (we have used Symbolic Model Verifier (SMV)) for the use of formal verification. We have contributed to the following tasks in this respect. Firstly, the way to specify the protocol using MSC has been presented. Secondly, a translator that translates the specifications (described in a textual input file) into SMV programs has been constructed. Finally, we have presented the verification result of the AMBA bus protocol using the SMV program found through the translation process. The SMV program found through the translation process can be used in order to automatically verify various properties of any bus protocol specified.