A Calculus for Modular Loop Acceleration and Non-Termination Proofs

Abstract: Loop acceleration can be used to prove safety, reachability, runtime bounds, and (non-)termination of programs. To this end, a variety of acceleration techniques has been proposed. However, so far all of them have been monolithic, i.e., a single loop could not be accelerated using a combination of several different acceleration techniques. In contrast, we present a calculus that allows for combining acceleration techniques in a modular way and we show how to integrate many existing acceleration techniques into our calculus. Moreover, we propose two novel acceleration techniques that can be incorporated into our calculus seamlessly. Some of these acceleration techniques apply only to non-terminating loops. Thus, combining them with our novel calculus results in a new, modular approach for proving non-termination. An empirical evaluation demonstrates the applicability of our approach, both for loop acceleration and for proving non-termination.