Complete Symbolic Simulation of SystemC Models: Efficient Formal Verification of Finite Non-Terminating Programs

In hismaster thesis, Vladimir Herdt presents a novel approach, called completesymbolic simulation, for a more efficient verification ofmuch larger (non-terminating) SystemC programs.

Theapproach combines symbolic simulation with stateful model checking and allowsto verify safety properties in (cyclic) finite state spaces, by exhaustiveexploration of all possible inputs and process schedulings.

The state explosionproblem is alleviated by integrating two complementary reduction techniques.

Comparedto existing approaches, the complete symbolic simulation works more efficiently,and therefore can provide correctness proofs for larger systems, which is oneof the most challenging tasks, due to the ever increasing complexity.