An Empirical Evaluation of Automated Theorem Provers in Software Certification
An Empirical Evaluation of Automated Theorem Provers in Software Certification
We describe a system for the automated certification of safety properties of NASA software. The system uses Hoare-style program verification technology to generate proof obligations which are then processed by an automated first-order theorem prover (ATP). We discuss the unique requirements this application places on the ATPs, focusing on automation, proof checking, traceability, and usability, and describe the resulting system architecture, including a certification browser that maintains and displays links between obligations and source code locations. For full automation, the obligations must be aggressively preprocessed and simplified, and we demonstrate how the individual simplification stages, which are implemented by rewriting, influence the ability of the ATPs to solve the proof tasks. Our results are based on 13 comprehensive certification experiments that lead to 366 top-level safety obligations and ultimately to more than 25,000 proof tasks which have been used to determine the suitability of the high-performance provers DCTP, E-Setheo, E, Gandalf, Otter, Setheo, Spass, and Vampire, and our associated infrastructure. The proofs found by Otter have been checked by Ivy.
software certification, automated theorem proving, program synthesis, proof checking, traceability, verification condition generator, Hoare logic
81-107
Denney, Ewen
cce9ba14-a1fd-4a7b-8e90-fcb234b53e1d
Fischer, Bernd
0c9575e6-d099-47f1-b3a2-2dbc93c53d18
Schumann, Johann
03135c8b-0f6e-4a20-9453-6a4e2d8a1e23
February 2006
Denney, Ewen
cce9ba14-a1fd-4a7b-8e90-fcb234b53e1d
Fischer, Bernd
0c9575e6-d099-47f1-b3a2-2dbc93c53d18
Schumann, Johann
03135c8b-0f6e-4a20-9453-6a4e2d8a1e23
Denney, Ewen, Fischer, Bernd and Schumann, Johann
(2006)
An Empirical Evaluation of Automated Theorem Provers in Software Certification.
International Journal on Artificial Intelligence Tools, 15 (1), .
Abstract
We describe a system for the automated certification of safety properties of NASA software. The system uses Hoare-style program verification technology to generate proof obligations which are then processed by an automated first-order theorem prover (ATP). We discuss the unique requirements this application places on the ATPs, focusing on automation, proof checking, traceability, and usability, and describe the resulting system architecture, including a certification browser that maintains and displays links between obligations and source code locations. For full automation, the obligations must be aggressively preprocessed and simplified, and we demonstrate how the individual simplification stages, which are implemented by rewriting, influence the ability of the ATPs to solve the proof tasks. Our results are based on 13 comprehensive certification experiments that lead to 366 top-level safety obligations and ultimately to more than 25,000 proof tasks which have been used to determine the suitability of the high-performance provers DCTP, E-Setheo, E, Gandalf, Otter, Setheo, Spass, and Vampire, and our associated infrastructure. The proofs found by Otter have been checked by Ivy.
More information
Published date: February 2006
Keywords:
software certification, automated theorem proving, program synthesis, proof checking, traceability, verification condition generator, Hoare logic
Organisations:
Electronic & Software Systems
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 262355
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/262355
PURE UUID: 17a1c63d-ad2b-4c56-ba9a-7583553357bd
Catalogue record
Date deposited: 12 Apr 2006
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 07:10
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Contributors
Author:
Ewen Denney
Author:
Bernd Fischer
Author:
Johann Schumann
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