Saturation-based symbolic reachability analysis using conjunctive and disjunctive partitioning

Abstract

We propose a new saturation-based symbolic state-space generation algorithm for finite discrete-state systems. Based on the structure of the high-level model specification, we first disjunctively partition the transition relation of the system, then conjunctively partition each disjunct. Our new encoding recognizes identity transformations of state variables and exploits event locality, enabling us to apply a recursive fixed-point image computation strategy completely different from the standard breadth-first approach employing a global fix-point image computation. Compared to breadth-first symbolic methods, saturation has already been empirically shown to be several orders more efficient in terms of runtime and peak memory requirements for asynchronous concurrent systems. With the new partitioning, the saturation algorithm can now be applied to completely general asynchronous systems, while requiring similar or better run-times and peak memory than previous saturation algorithms. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2005.