Multi-Level Bounded Model Checking with Symbolic Counterexamples

Abstract

Bounded model checking is a widely used formal technique in both hardware and software verification. However, it cannot be applied if the bounds (number of time frames to be analyzed) become large, and deep bugs which are observed only through very long counter-examples cannot be detected. This paper presents a method concatenating multiple bounded model checking results efficiently with symbolic simulation. A bounded model checking with a large bound is recursively decomposed into multiple ones with smaller bounds, and symbolic simulation on each counterexample supports smooth connections to the others. A strong heuristic for the proposed method that targets deep bugs is also presented, and can be applied together with other efficient bounded model checking methods since it does not touch the basic bounded model checking algorithm.