Finding more bugs with software model checking using delta debugging

Many verification tasks in model checking (one of the formal software verification approaches) can’t be solved within bounded time requirements due to combinatorial state space explosion. In order to find a bug in the verified program in a given time, a simplified version of it can be analyzed. This paper presents DD** algorithms (based on the Delta Debugging approach) to iterate over simplified versions of the given program. These algorithms were implemented in software-verification tool CPAchecker. Our experiments showed that this technique might be used to find new bugs in real software.