An Interactive Verification Tool for Synchronous/Reactive Systems

Model checking is so far the dominant verification technique for synchronous/reactive systems. However, it is well-known that model checking suffers from an enormous complexity so that only systems of moderate size can be verified this way. Interactive verification methods based on theorem provers are therefore an interesting alternative to verify large systems at different levels of abstraction. However, state-of-the-art theorem provers were designed for general proof problems, so that their use for the interactive verification of synchronous/reactive systems is often too inconvenient for the typical user. In this paper, we therefore describe the implementation and the main data structures of an interactive tool for the verification of synchronous systems. Due to its specialized application domain, the tool does not aim to replace state-of-the-art theorem provers. Instead, we want to develop a specialized and convenient interactive theorem prover for the verification of synchronous systems. Moreover, since the presented verification tool is tightly integrated with a tool for hardware and software synthesis, many software libraries can be shared between synthesis and verification. In the long term, synthesis can therefore also benefit from verification in that optimizations are possible that are not used today due to too pessimistic estimations.