Design Verification for Sequential Systems at Various Abstraction Levels

ion and Refinement for Design Verification at Logic Level Abstraction refinement has recently emerged as an enabling technology for applying model checking techniques to large real-life designs. Previous techniques for abstraction refinement work on static abstractions, in that the abstract model produced by the abstraction algorithm is not modified by the downstream model checking. We propose a new, dynamic method of abstraction, which can be applied during successive steps of the model checking algorithm to further abstract the model produced by traditional static abstraction methods. This is facilitated by information gathered from an analysis of the proof of unsatisfiability of SAT-based bounded model checking problems, solved on the concrete model, and passed to the model checker. It effectively allows the model checker to work with smaller abstract models. Experiments on several industrial benchmarks demonstrate that dynamic abstraction significantly improves the performance of the abstraction refinement flow and alsoion refinement has recently emerged as an enabling technology for applying model checking techniques to large real-life designs. Previous techniques for abstraction refinement work on static abstractions, in that the abstract model produced by the abstraction algorithm is not modified by the downstream model checking. We propose a new, dynamic method of abstraction, which can be applied during successive steps of the model checking algorithm to further abstract the model produced by traditional static abstraction methods. This is facilitated by information gathered from an analysis of the proof of unsatisfiability of SAT-based bounded model checking problems, solved on the concrete model, and passed to the model checker. It effectively allows the model checker to work with smaller abstract models. Experiments on several industrial benchmarks demonstrate that dynamic abstraction significantly improves the performance of the abstraction refinement flow and also