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Section: New Software and Platforms

Apalache

Abstraction-based Parameterized TLA+ Checker

Keyword: Model Checker

Scientific Description: Apalache is a symbolic model checker that works under the following assumptions:

(1) As in TLC, all specification parameters are fixed and finite, e.g., the system is initialized integers, finite sets, and functions of finite domains and co-domains. (2) As in TLC, all data structures evaluated during an execution are finite, e.g., a system specification cannot operate on the set of all integers. (3) Only finite executions up to a given bound are analysed.

Apalache translates bounded executions of a TLA+ specifications into a set of quantifier-free SMT constraints. By querying the SMT solver, the model checker either finds a counterexample to an invariant, or proves that there is no counterexample up to given computation length.

Functional Description: The first version implements a symbolic bounded model checker for TLA+ that runs under the same assumptions as the explicit-state model checker TLC. It checks whether a TLA+ specification satisfies an invariant candidate by checking satisfiability of an SMT formula that encodes: (1) an execution of bounded length, and (2) preservation of the invariant candidate in every state of the execution. Our tool is still in the experimental phase, due to a number of challenges posed by the semantics of TLA+ to SMT solvers.

News Of The Year: In 2019, we have simplified the set of rewriting rules, which are used in the translation from TLA+ to SMT. We have shown that the rules are sound, that is, that the translator produces a set of SMT constraints that are equisatisfiable to the given TLA+ formula. We have conducted the experiments on 10 TLA+ specifications of distributed algorithms. When running bounded model checking, Apalache outperforms TLC in some cases. When checking inductive invariants, Apalache runs significantly faster than TLC. These results were reported at ACM OOPSLA 2019.



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