Reactive Synthesis in Action

Project Information

SYNTACT

Grant agreement ID: 101069165

DOI

10.3030/101069165

Project closed

EC signature date 19 April 2022

Start date 1 May 2022

End date 31 October 2023

Funded under

• European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 150 000,00

Coordinated by

TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY
Israel

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SYNTACT (Reactive Synthesis in Action)

Reporting period: 2022-05-01 to 2023-10-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Bugs in software systems pose a huge and growing cost on society, not only in economic terms but also in direct risk to human lives. Reactive synthesis is a new technology to automatically generate correct-by-construction software. Unlike testing and formal verification, which require advance investment in an implementation, reactive synthesis generates a correct implementation directly from its formal specification.

Despite its potential to reduce software development costs and at the same time increase the confidence one may have in the correctness of software, to date, no application of reactive synthesis has been examined outside academic labs. The main objectives of the project are to put reactive synthesis technologies to test in industrial beta-sites and thus generate and disseminate knowhow on the use of reactive synthesis in practice, identify and address product and process obstacles, build a community of parties that are interested in the promotion and transfer of reactive synthesis technologies from academia to industry, and lay a foundation to guide future research, standardization, collaboration, and industry investment in reactive synthesis technologies.

All these are expected to advance the state-of-the-practice in reactive synthesis and thus start paving the way for its adoption in industry.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

We list the project's main technical and scientific activities and achievements.

First, the study of the Spectra specification language, including extensions of usability and case study examples, based on discussions with collaborators in industry and feedback from early end-users. These include the extension of Spectra with additional language constructs together with user studies that focused on examining the usage of these constructs by end-users.

Second, extending the Spectra synthesis IDE, based on feedback from end-users, with improved performance for important analyses as well as new mechanisms for reuse and evolution.

Third, running several case-studies with industrial partners, collecting feedback from engineers who used the synthesizer. The feedback was the source for the identification of the gaps remaining on the way for larger adoption of synthesis technologies in industry.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

We have identified that the key gaps remaining on the way for larger adoption of synthesis technologies in industry are in the ability of engineers to write correct formal specifications, which in turn depends on the specification language, the process and methodology of writing and evolving specifications, and the tools that support them. Further collection of evidence from end-users in industrial settings as well as much further research in specification comprehension, methodology, and tools development, are required in order to start making the use of synthesis in industry a reality.