On the Scalability of the GPUexplore Explicit-State Model Checker

TL;DR

This paper examines the scalability of GPUexplore, a GPU-based explicit-state model checker, by analyzing its hash table and testing its performance on various models and modern GPUs.

Contribution

It introduces a modified hash table for GPUexplore and evaluates its impact on scalability and performance on recent NVIDIA GPUs.

Findings

Modified hash table shows promising isolated results

GPUexplore's scalability varies with model size and GPU hardware

Performance improvements depend on hash table and hardware optimizations

Abstract

The use of graphics processors (GPUs) is a promising approach to speed up model checking to such an extent that it becomes feasible to instantly verify software systems during development. GPUexplore is an explicit-state model checker that runs all its computations on the GPU. Over the years it has been extended with various techniques, and the possibilities to further improve its performance have been continuously investigated. In this paper, we discuss how the hash table of the tool works, which is at the heart of its functionality. We propose an alteration of the hash table that in isolated experiments seems promising, and analyse its effect when integrated in the tool. Furthermore, we investigate the current scalability of GPUexplore, by experimenting both with input models of varying sizes and running the tool on one of the latest GPUs of NVIDIA.