Synthesis of Parametric Programs using Genetic Programming and Model Checking

Gal Katz
(Bar Ilan University)
Doron Peled
(Bar Ilan University)

Formal methods apply algorithms based on mathematical principles to enhance the reliability of systems. It would only be natural to try to progress from verification, model checking or testing a system against its formal specification into constructing it automatically. Classical algorithmic synthesis theory provides interesting algorithms but also alarming high complexity and undecidability results. The use of genetic programming, in combination with model checking and testing, provides a powerful heuristic to synthesize programs. The method is not completely automatic, as it is fine tuned by a user that sets up the specification and parameters. It also does not guarantee to always succeed and converge towards a solution that satisfies all the required properties. However, we applied it successfully on quite nontrivial examples and managed to find solutions to hard programming challenges, as well as to improve and to correct code. We describe here several versions of our method for synthesizing sequential and concurrent systems.

Invited Tutorial in Lukas Holik and Lorenzo Clemente: Proceedings 15th International Workshop on Verification of Infinite-State Systems (INFINITY 2013), Hanoi, Vietnam, 14th October 2013, Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science 140, pp. 70–84.
Published: 23rd February 2014.

ArXived at: https://dx.doi.org/10.4204/EPTCS.140.5 bibtex PDF
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