UMB: A Unified Markov Binary Format for Probabilistic Model Checking (extended version)

2026-06-16

AI Summary

This work addresses the lack of a unified and efficient low-level interchange format in existing probabilistic systems, which hinders tool interoperability and incurs high I/O overhead. To overcome this limitation, the paper introduces the Unified Markov Binary (UMB) format—the first standardized, extensible, and highly efficient binary representation for probabilistic model checking. UMB is grounded in a general mathematical framework and employs bit-level primitive encoding to achieve compactness and performance. Accompanied by a dedicated Python library and a cross-tool validation infrastructure, UMB has already been adopted by mainstream tools, significantly improving model processing efficiency and enabling novel application scenarios.

Abstract

This paper presents the unified Markov binary (UMB) format, an efficient, extensible, and well-supported explicit-state file format for representing a wide range of probabilistic systems. UMB addresses the problem that, while probabilistic model checking tools often support common high-level modelling languages, there is no effective mechanism for exchanging low-level model representations. In practice, textual, tool-specific formats are used, hampering interoperability and resulting in large overheads in writing and reading model files. UMB provides a clean, unified, and efficient solution, based on a general underlying mathematical model, and encoded using a small set of bit-level primitive data structures. The format has already been adopted by prominent tools and comes with a convenient Python library for reading, manipulating, creating, and validating models, plus infrastructure for cross-tool installation and continuous validation. We report on both the efficiency of the file format and the new practical use cases that it facilitates.

Problem

• probabilistic model checking
• model interchange
• interoperability
• binary format
• explicit-state representation

Innovation

• Unified Markov Binary Format
• Probabilistic Model Checking
• Interoperability
• Efficient File Encoding
• Explicit-State Representation