Modular System Synthesis

TL;DR

This paper proposes a modular approach to program synthesis that improves scalability by constructing larger programs from smaller, similar sub-problems, enabling more capable synthesis tools and new research directions.

Contribution

It introduces a method to ensure sub-problems in modular synthesis are similar, enhancing scalability and opening new avenues for synthesis research.

Findings

Potential for more scalable synthesis tools

Framework for modular system design support

New research directions in synthesis applications

Abstract

This paper describes a way to improve the scalability of program synthesis by exploiting modularity: larger programs are synthesized from smaller programs. The key issue is to make each "larger-created-from-smaller" synthesis sub-problem be of a similar nature, so that the kind of synthesis sub-problem that needs to be solved--and the size of each search space--has roughly the same character at each level. This work holds promise for creating program-synthesis tools that have far greater capabilities than currently available tools, and opens new avenues for synthesis research: how synthesis tools should support modular system design, and how synthesis applications can best exploit such capabilities.