A New Numerical Abstract Domain Based on Difference-Bound Matrices

  • Authors:
  • Antoine Miné

  • Affiliations:
  • -

  • Venue:
  • PADO '01 Proceedings of the Second Symposium on Programs as Data Objects
  • Year:
  • 2001

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

This paper presents a new numerical abstract domain for static analysis by abstract interpretation. This domain allows us to represent invariants of the form (x - y ≤ c)an d (±x ≤ c), where x and y are variables values and c is an integer or real constant. Abstract elements are represented by Difference-Bound Matrices, widely used by model-checkers, but we had to design new operators to meet the needs of abstract interpretation. The result is a complete lattice of infinite height featuring widening, narrowing and common transfer functions. We focus on giving an efficient O(n2)re presentation and graph-based O(n3) algorithms--where n is the number of variables--and claim that this domain always performs more precisely than the well-known interval domain. To illustrate the precision/cost tradeoff of this domain, we have implemented simple abstract interpreters for toy imperative and parallel languages which allowed us to prove some non-trivial algorithms correct.