Data Structure Choices for On-the-Fly Model Checking of Real-Time Systems

This paper studies the performance of sparsematrix-based data structures to represent clock zones (convex sets of clock values) in an on-the-fly predicate equation system model checker for timed automata. We analyze the impact of replacing the dense difference bound matrix (DBM) with both the linked-list CRDZone and array-list CRDArray data structure. From analysis on the pairedexample-by-example differences in time performance, we infer the DBM is either competitive with or slightly faster than the CRDZone, and both perform faster than the CRDArray. Using similar analysis on space performance, we infer the CRDZone takes the least space, and the DBM takes less space than the CRDArray.