Symbolic Compositional Verification by Learning Assumptions

Abstract

The verification problem for a system consisting of components can be decomposed into simpler subproblems for the components using assume-guarantee reasoning. However, such compositional reasoning requires user guidance to identify appropriate assumptions for components. In this paper, we propose an automated solution for discovering assumptions based on the L* algorithm for active learning of regular languages. We present a symbolic implementation of the learning algorithm, and incorporate it in the model checker NuSMV. Our experiments demonstrate significant savings in the computational requirements of symbolic model checking.