Testing-based analysis of real-time system models

Formal methods approaches to software and hardware verification use mathematical models and rigorous proof techniques to describe and analyze system models. Though most formalisms will allow models of unlimited complexity to be constructed, rigorous analysis of realistic models is frequently intractable. In this paper we describe the Algebra of Communicating Shared Resources with Value Passing (ACSR-VP), a process algebra for modeling resource-bound real-time systems, and describe how we are using testing techniques to check functional and real-time properties of realistic systems. Though testing based analysis lacks the certainty of formal analysis, it significantly expands the size of models that can be considered.