Widening and narrowing operators for abstract interpretation

Abstract Interpretation, one of the most applied techniques for semantics based static analysis of software, is based on two main key-concepts: the correspondence between concrete and abstract semantics through Galois connections/insertions, and the feasibility of a fixed point computation of the abstract semantics, through the fast convergence of widening operators. The latter point is crucial to ensure the scalability of the analysis to large software systems. The aim of this paper is to set the ground for a systematic design of widening and narrowing operators, by comparing the different definitions introduced in the literature and by discussing how to tune them in case of domain abstraction and domains’ combination through cartesian and reduced products.