USING PARTIAL-ORDER METHODS IN THE FORMAL VALIDATION OF INDUSTRIAL CONCURRENT PROGRAMS

Formal validation is a powerful technique for automatically checking t hat a collection of communicating processes is free from concurrency-r elated errors. Although validation tools invariably find subtle errors that were missed during thorough simulation and testing, the brute-fo rce search they perform can result in excessive memory usage and extre mely long running times. Recently, a number of researchers have been i nvestigating techniques known as partial-order methods that can signif icantly reduce the computational resources needed for formal validatio n by avoiding redundant exploration of execution scenarios. This paper investigates the behavior of partial-order methods in an industrial s etting. We describe the design of a partial-order algorithm for a form al validation tool that has been used on several projects that are dev eloping software for the Lucent Technologies 5ESS(R) telephone switchi ng system. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm by presen ting the results of experiments with actual industrial examples drawn from a variety of 5ESS application domains.