Symbolic Model Checking without BDDs
Armin Biere5
, Alessandro Cimatti6
, Edmund Clarke5
and Yunshan Zhu5 
| (5) |
Computer Science Department, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA |
| (6) |
Istituto per la Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica (IRST), via Sommarive 18, 38055 Povo (TN), Italy |
Abstract
Symbolic Model Checking [3], [14] has proven to be a powerful technique for the verification of reactive systems. BDDs [2] have traditionally been used as a symbolic representation of the system. In this paper we show how boolean decision procedures,
like Stålmarck’s Method [16] or the Davis & Putnam Procedure [7], can replace BDDs. This new technique avoids the space blow up of BDDs, generates counterexamples much faster, and sometimes
speeds up the verification. In addition, it produces counterexamples of minimal length. We introduce a bounded model checking procedure for LTL which reduces model checking to propositional satisfiability.We show that bounded LTL model checking can
be done without a tableau construction. We have implemented a model checker BMC, based on bounded model checking, and preliminary
results are presented.
This research is sponsored by the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) under Contract No. 97-DJ-294 and the National Science
Foundation (NSF) under Grant No. CCR-9505472. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this
material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of SRC, NSF, or the United States Government.
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