Direct Support for Model Checking Abstract State Machines by Utilizing Simulation

This paper presents an approach to model checking abstract state machines (ASMs) without the need for translation of the ASM specification into the modeling language of an existing model checker. Instead, our model checker [mc]square uses the simulation capabilities of CoreASM to build the state space, thereby directly supporting ASMs and circumventing a possible loss of expressiveness in a translation process. This enables our approach to present counterexamples and witnesses directly as sequences of ASM states and at the same time supports the major features of CoreASM like distributed ASMs, n-ary functions or extended rule forms. We show the applicability of this approach in a case study that also reveals possible improvements desirable for minimizing the duration needed for building the state space and its memory consumption.

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