Salsa: Combining Constraint Solvers with BDDs for Automatic Invariant Checking In Proc. Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems

Salsa is an invariant checker for speci cations in SAL (the SCR Abstract Language). To establish a formula as an invariant without any user guidance Salsa carries out an induction proof that utilizes tightly integrated decision procedures, currently a combination of BDD algorithms and a constraint solver for integer linear arithmetic, for discharging the veri cation conditions. The user interface of Salsa is designed to mimic the interfaces of model checkers; i.e., given a formula and a system description, Salsa either establishes the formula as an invariant of the system (but returns no proof) or provides a counterexample. In either case, the algorithm will terminate. Unlike model checkers, Salsa returns a state pair as a counterexample and not an execution sequence. Also, due to the incompleteness of induction, users must validate the counterexamples. The use of induction enables Salsa to combat the state explosion problem that plagues model checkers { it can handle speci cations whose state spaces are too large for model checkers to analyze. Also, unlike general purpose theorem provers, Salsa concentrates on a single task and gains e ciency by employing a set of optimized heuristics.