Efficient Reachability Analysis for Verification of Asynchronous Systems Nishant Sinha
Outline • Formal Verification: Motivation • Reachability for Asynchronous Systems • Partitioned Transition Relations • Efficient Reachability Techniques • MBFS and Saturation • Saturation: Experimental Results • Conclusions
Formal Verification: Introduction • Use methods from formal logic • Show validity of properties on systems • Formal requirements hold on a design • Software, circuits, protocol models • Alternative to simulation, testing • Not all behaviors covered • Model checking • Verify concurrent systems • Introduced by Clarke et al. (1981) • An automated technique
Model Checking • Finite state-transition model M, Property • Determine if M satisfies • Properties like: • req is always followed by ack • No error state is reachable from the initial state • Involves Reachability analysis • Generate reachable set of states • State space explosion 2K .... K
Asynchronous Systems • Concurrent Systems • Consist of several execution units • Synchronous • All units take an execution step together • Asynchronous • Units may execute independent of each other • Interleaved semantics of execution • E.g. Concurrent software, asynchronous circuits • Goal: Efficient model checking of asynchronous systems Reduced State-Space Symbolic
(!a Æ a’) (a Æ !a’) (a Æ a’) a0 1 s0 s1 N(a,a’) = a 0 1 a’ 1 1 Symbolic Model Checking • Use Ordered Binary Decision Diagrams (BDDs) • Canonical, compact, operate on state sets • Encode the system model M with BDDs • States encoded by boolean variables V • Transition relation also as BDD N(V,V’) t3 t1 s1 s0 a < a’ t2 a 1 0 a’ a’ 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 1
Partial-Order Reduction • Alternative model checking approach • Useful if order of execution of transitions is irrelevant • Sufficient to visit a subset of actual reachable state space • Focus of this talk • Full state space reachability using BDDs Choose a representative set of paths s0s0’ b a a s0 s1 s0s1’ s1s0’ a b b s0’ s1’ s1s1’
Reachability Analysis • One-step reachability: • Given a set of states S • Find which states S’ can be reached in one step • Iteratively apply one-step reachability • Until no new states are visited • Breadth-first exploration of graph R0 R1 R2 = R3 b b b c c c a a a e e e f f f d d d g g g
? The Bigger Picture I1 Combinational Circuit I2 Combinational Circuit Delay Delay o1 o2 o1 = 0 o2 = 0 o1 = 0 o2 = 1 o1 = 1 o2 = 0 o1 = 1 o2 = 1
Symbolic Reachability : Image Computation • Image of a set of states S • Transition relation N: one-step reachability • Basic operation, hence must be efficient • Symbolic image computation: S(V), N(V,V’) BDDs • Img(S,N) = [ 9v2 V (S(V) Æ N(V,V’) )] • Reachability (starting from initial S0): • Reach(S,N) = S [ Img(S,N) • Fixpoint: S. Reach(S,N) • Efficiency problem: Large N(V,V’) • Large intermediate BDD sizes in image computation
Illustration: Intermediate BDD Sizes #States #BddNodes Dining Philosophers model Iterations
Partitioned Transition Relations • Introduced by Burch et al. (BCL91) • : Conjunction (Æ) or Disjunction () • N(V,V’) = N1 N2 Nk • Typically, each Ni much smaller than N • Asynchronous systems with interleaving semantics: • N(V,V’) = N1 N2 Nk • Ni: only the ith unit executes • Img(S, N) = ViImg(S,Ni) N1 N2 N3 [BCL91]J.R. Burch, E.M. Clarke, and D.E. Long. Symbolic model checking with partitioned transition relations. In A. Halaas and P.B. Denyer, editors, International Conference on Very Large Scale Integration, pages 49-58, Edinburgh, Scotland, 1991. North-Holland.
BDD blowup • Must consider different intermediate combinations of reachable states of concurrent units • Even if they are independent • Adds to intermediate BDD sizes • Idea: Explore each unit separately to avoid such correlation [BCL91] • Modified Breadth-First Search (MBFS) [BCL91]J.R. Burch, E.M. Clarke, and D.E. Long. Symbolic model checking with partitioned transition relations. In A. Halaas and P.B. Denyer, editors, International Conference on Very Large Scale Integration, pages 49-58, Edinburgh, Scotland, 1991. North-Holland.
Modified Breadth-First Search (MBFS) • Given a disjunctive partition: N1,...,Nk • Compute local fixpoints: S. Reach(S,Ni) • Stop when: 8 i. Reach(S,Ni) = S • Lower intermediate BDD sizes • Chaotic fixpoint iterationstrategy • Family of functions: {Reach(S,Ni) j i · k} • Apply functions in arbitrary order till convergence • Must apply each function sufficiently often • Observation: MBFS strategy may not be able to avoid blowups in some cases N1* N2* N3*
Illustration: BDD Blowup in MBFS ... N2 N3 s1 (11) s0 (00) s = (v2, v1, ...) N1, N2, N3, ... N1 N1 s2 (01) s3 (10) N1, N2 N1, N2 BDD explosion v2 v2 v2 N3 MBFS MBFS MBFS 1 0 N1 0 N2 v1 0 v1 0 1 1 1 1 N1 1 (s0) (s0,s2) (s0,s1,s2) (s0,s1,s2,s3)
Saturation: New approach • Assume fixed variable ordering on BDDs: v1 < v2 ... < vk • Define • High(Ni): “least” variable that Ni might change • Low(Ni): “greatest” variable that Ni might change • Order transition relations by [High(Ni), Low(Ni)] : • NjÁ Ni • Nj changes only “lower” BDD variables than Ni v2 1 N2 0 v1 N1 Á N2 N1 1 1
Saturation (Contd.) • Saturate (Ni) do Compute S. Reach(S,Ni) /* states reachable by only Ni */ 8 NjÁ Ni. Saturate (Nj) /*explore all NjÁ Ni */ Until S does not change • Visits all possible reachable states using “lower” transition relations than Ni • Overall Strategy: K partitions • For i= 1 to K. Saturate(Ni) N3* N2* N1*
Saturation: Discussion • Advantages • Exploits independence of concurrent units • Lower intermediate BDD sizes than MBFS • Faster reachability computation in many cases • Drawbacks • May lead to spurious iterations • Relies heavily on good variable ordering
Experimental Results • Implemented Saturation approach in NuSMV model checker • Handles designs of industrial strength OOR: out of resources Comparison with NuSMV with default options
Experimental Results (contd.) • Implemented MBFS approach in NuSMV Comparison with MBFS
Experimental Results (contd.) Iterations Kanban(20): Comparison of Intermediate BDD sizes
Conclusions • Efficient methods to compute reachable states of asynchronous systems • Based on disjunctive partitions • MBFS • Alternative approach: Saturation • Experimentally validated on several examples • Future research • Heuristics for obtaining good BDD variable ordering automatically • Combining Saturation with Partial Order Reduction
Questions ?
