1995•Unpublished venueRequires access
Formal Methods: State of the Art and Future Directions
Clarke, Edmund M, Jeannette M. Wing, Alur, Rajeev, Cleaveland, Rance, Dill, David, Emerson, Allen, Garland, Stephen, German, Steven, Guttag, John, Hall, Anthony, Henzinger, Thomas, Holzmann, Gerard, Jones, Cliff, Kurshan, Robert, Leveson, Nancy, McMillan, Kenneth, Moore, J., Peled, Doron, Pnueli, Amir, Rushby, John, Shankar, Natarajan, Sifakis, Joseph, Sistla, Prasad, Steffen, Bernhard, Wolper, Pierre, Woodcock, Jim, Zave, Pamela
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Abstract
We survey recent progress in the development of mathematical techniques for specifying and verifying complex hardware and software systems. Many ofthesetechniques are capable of handling industrial-sized examples � in fact, in some cases these techniques are already being used on a regular basis in industry. Success in formal speci cation can be attributed to notations that are accessible to system designers and to new methodologies for applying these notations e ectively. Success in veri cation can be attributed to the development of new tools such asmorepowerful theorem provers and model checkers than were previously available. Finally, we suggest some general research directions that we believe are likely to lead to technological advances. Although it is di cult to predict where the future advances will come, optimism about the next generation of formal methods is justi ed in view of the progress during the past decade. Such progress, however, will strongly depend on continued support for basic research on new speci cation languages