A context-sensitive memory model for verification of C/C++ programs

Abstract

Verification of low-level C/C++ requires a precise memory model that supports type unions, pointer arithmetic, and casts. We present a new memory model that splits memory into a finite set of disjoint regions based on a pointer analysis. The main contribution is a field-, array- and context-sensitive pointer analysis tailored to verification. We have implemented our memory model for the LLVM bitcode and used it on a C++ case study and on SV-COMP benchmarks. Our results suggests that our model can reduce verification time by producing a finer-grained partitioning in presence of function calls.