An incremental approach to model checking progress properties

An incremental algorithm for model checking progress properties is proposed. It follows from the following insight: any SCC-closed region of a system's state graph can be represented by a sequence of inductive assertions. Each iteration of the algorithm selects a set of states, called a skeleton, that together satisfy all fairness conditions; it then applies safety model checkers to attempt to connect the states into a reachable fair cycle. If this attempt fails, the resulting learned lemma takes one of two forms: an inductive reachability assertion that shows that at least one state of the skeleton is unreachable, or an inductive wall that defines two SCC-closed regions of the state graph. Subsequent skeletons must be chosen entirely from one side of the wall. Because a lemma often applies more generally than to the one skeleton from which it was derived, property-directed abstraction is achieved. The algorithm is highly parallelizable.