Some current issues in model checking

Abstract

Model checking is a particular approach to property verification of systems. One describes a system in a mathematical model, expresses the properties one wishes to verify for the system in a formal language, and then checks whether the model satisfies the formal property. Invented 25 years ago, this approach is fully automatic and has therefore gained wide acceptance and is increasingly being used in commercial research and development units. Impediments remain on the road to successful technology transfer. For one, the size of models often increases exponentially in the number of variables or sub-models, preventing scalable automation. Abstracting a model to reduce its size can be a cost-effective way of addressing this. For another, systems and models may be subject to change, e.g. in an incremental design process. One then seeks cost-effective means of ascertaining that property verifications remain to be valid as models evolve. This special section presents current research on such abstraction and change management of model checking. © Springer-Verlag 2007.