English

Bit-Precise CHC Satisfiability Using Theory-Modular Reasoning

Logic in Computer Science 2026-08-05 v1 Programming Languages

Abstract

Deciding satisfiability of Constrained Horn Clauses (CHCs) modulo the theory of fixed-size bit-vectors (TB\mathcal{T}_B) is fundamental to bit-precise program verification. However, state-of-the-art CHC-solvers often struggle with TB\mathcal{T}_B, limiting scalability in bit-precise reasoning. We present Mosaic, a theory-modular framework for deciding satisfiability of CHCs modulo TB\mathcal{T}_B by combining reasoning in TB\mathcal{T}_B and the theory of Integer Arithmetic (TI\mathcal{T}_I). Given a CHC set modulo TB\mathcal{T}_B, Mosaic partitions it into two fragments interpreted over TB\mathcal{T}_B and TI\mathcal{T}_I. Moreover, it implements an algorithm that reasons about the fragments in a modular fashion, exchanges information between them via sound translations across theories, and determines satisfiability w.r.t. the original CHC set. We implemented a prototype of Mosaic using Z3 and Spacer and evaluated it on bit-manipulating benchmarks. Our evaluation shows that Mosaic significantly outperforms Spacer on these benchmarks.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2608.05337,
  title  = {Bit-Precise CHC Satisfiability Using Theory-Modular Reasoning},
  author = {Omer Rappoport and Orna Grumberg and Yakir Vizel},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2608.05337},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Accepted at ATVA 2026