Improving BDD Based Symbolic Model Checking with Isomorphism Exploiting Transition Relations

TL;DR

This paper introduces an approach that exploits isomorphisms in transition relations to reduce memory and time in BDD-based symbolic model checking of asynchronous systems, enabling verification of previously intractable systems.

Contribution

It presents a novel method leveraging transition relation similarities to improve BDD-based model checking efficiency for asynchronous systems.

Findings

Memory usage is significantly reduced.

Verification time is decreased.

Previously intractable systems become verifiable.

Abstract

Symbolic model checking by using BDDs has greatly improved the applicability of model checking. Nevertheless, BDD based symbolic model checking can still be very memory and time consuming. One main reason is the complex transition relation of systems. Sometimes, it is even not possible to generate the transition relation, due to its exhaustive memory requirements. To diminish this problem, the use of partitioned transition relations has been proposed. However, there are still systems which can not be verified at all. Furthermore, if the granularity of the partitions is too fine, the time required for verification may increase. In this paper we target the symbolic verification of asynchronous concurrent systems. For such systems we present an approach which uses similarities in the transition relation to get further memory reductions and runtime improvements. By applying our approach, even the verification of systems with an previously intractable transition relation becomes feasible.