Abstract. Probabilistic model checking is an automatic formal verification technique for analysing quantitative properties of systems which exhibit stochastic behaviour. PRISM is a probabilistic model checking tool which has already been successfully deployed in a wide range of application domains, from real-time communication protocols to biological signalling pathways. The tool has recently undergone a significant amount of development. Major additions include facilities to manually explore models, Monte-Carlo discrete-event simulation techniques for approximate model analysis (including support for distributed simulation) and the ability to compute cost-and reward-based measures, e.g. "the expected energy consumption of the system before the first failure occurs". This paper presents an overview of all the main features of PRISM. More information can be found on the website: www.cs.bham.ac.uk/˜dxp/prism. Probabilistic model checking is an automatic formal verification technique for the analysis of systems which exhibit stochastic behaviour. Examples of such systems include well-known communication protocols such as FireWire and Bluetooth, which employ randomisation, and a wide range of computer and communication systems, unpredictable characteristics of which, such as message delays or times to failure, are best represented in a probabilistic fashion. Like traditional model checking, this technique involves constructing, from a description in some high-level formalism, a finite-state model of a real-life system, but additionally including information about the likelihood and timing of transitions between states occurring. From this model, a wide range of quantitative measures of the original system can be automatically computed. PRISM is a probabilistic model checking tool which has already been used to apply these techniques to a large and diverse set of case studies. In the following sections we describe the types of probabilistic model supported by PRISM and the properties of these models which can be analysed. We then give an overview of the main features of the tool. Finally, we summarise the case studies to which the tool has already been applied and the various resources which are available.
Probabilistic model checking REF is an extension of model checking [1] which was initially developed as a formal technique for finding bugs in circuits.
PRISM: A tool for automatic verification of probabilistic systems
Proc. 12th International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems (TACAS’06), volume 3920 of LNCS
Computer Science