Loop Summarization and Termination Analysis

Aliaksei Tsitovich, Natasha Sharygina, Christoph M. Wintersteiger, Daniel Kroening

Abstract: We present a technique for program termination analysis based on loop summarization. The algorithm relies on a library of abstract domains to discover well-founded transition invariants. In contrast to state-of-the-art methods it aims to construct a complete ranking argument for all paths through a loop at once, thus avoiding expensive enumeration of individual paths. Compositionality is used as a completeness criterion for the discovered transition invariants. The practical efficiency of the approach is evaluated using a set of Windows device drivers.