Abstract Interpretation: Theory and Practice

Our objective in this talk is to give an intuitive account of abstract interpretation theory [1][2][3][4][5] and to present and discuss its main applications [6]. Abstract interpretation theory formalizes the conservative approximation of the semantics of hardware or software computer systems. The semantics provides a formal model describing all possible behaviors of a computer system in interaction with any possible environment. By approximation we mean the observation of the semantics at some level of abstraction, ignoring irrelevant details. Conservative means that the approximation can never lead to an erroneous conclusion.

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