In computer science, model checking refers to the following problem: Given a model of a system, exhaustively and automatically check whether this model meets a given specification. Typically, the systems one has in mind are hardware or software systems, and the specification contains safety requirements such as the absence of deadlocks and similar critical states that can cause the system to crash. Model checking is a technique for automatically verifying correctness properties of finite-state systems.
In order to solve such a problem algorithmically, both the model of the system and the specification are formulated in some precise mathematical language: To this end, it is formulated as a task in logic, namely to check whether a given structure satisfies a given logical formula. The concept is general and applies to all kinds of logics and suitable structures. A simple model-checking problem is verifying whether a given formula in the propositional logic is satisfied by a given structure.
Read more about Model Checking: Overview, Algorithms, Tools
Famous quotes containing the word model:
“Socrates, who was a perfect model in all great qualities, ... hit on a body and face so ugly and so incongruous with the beauty of his soul, he who was so madly in love with beauty.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)