Causality-based Model Checking

• Main Authors: Bernd Finkbeiner, Andrey Kupriyanov
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Open Publishing Association 2017-10-01
• Series: Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science
• Online Access: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.03391v1

Model checking is usually based on a comprehensive traversal of the state space. Causality-based model checking is a radically different approach that instead analyzes the cause-effect relationships in a program. We give an overview on a new class of model checking algorithms that capture the causal relationships in a special data structure called concurrent traces. Concurrent traces identify key events in an execution history and link them through their cause-effect relationships. The model checker builds a tableau of concurrent traces, where the case splits represent different causal explanations of a hypothetical error. Causality-based model checking has been implemented in the ARCTOR tool, and applied to previously intractable multi-threaded benchmarks.