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Variant of Ant Colony Optimization

Technique

A Variant of Ant Colony Optimization (VACO) is used in Instiller for input instruction distillation in RTL fuzzing. It adapts ant colony optimization ideas to shorten input instruction sequences while maintaining coverage, improving fuzzing efficiency.

First seen 5/27/2026
Last seen 6/3/2026
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Overview

The Variant of Ant Colony Optimization (VACO) is a technique proposed in the Instiller RTL fuzzing work for input instruction distillation. Its purpose is to reduce CPU cycles and improve fuzzing performance by shortening input instruction sequences while preserving the original coverage achieved by those inputs.

Role in input instruction distillation

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RELATIONSHIPS

4 connections
Input Instruction Distillation ← uses 100% 12e
Input instruction distillation uses the variant of ant colony optimization (VACO) as its core algorithm.
Ant Colony Optimization derived from → 100% 11e
The Variant of Ant Colony Optimization (VACO) is derived from classic Ant Colony Optimization with modifications for RTL fuzzing.
INSTILLER ← implements 99% 8e
Instiller implements a variant of ant colony optimization (VACO) for input instruction distillation.
INSTILLER ← uses 100% 4e
Instiller uses a variant of ACO (VACO) to distill input instructions.

CITATIONS

5 sources
5 citations — click to expand
[1] VACO is proposed for input instruction distillation in Instiller. [2401.15967] Instiller: Towards Efficient and Realistic RTL Fuzzing
[2] Input instruction distillation constructs a shorter subset of the original input set while maintaining original coverage. [2401.15967] Instiller: Towards Efficient and Realistic RTL Fuzzing
[3] VACO adapts ant colony optimization by modeling input-instruction length as ants and RTL circuits as cities. [2401.15967] Instiller: Towards Efficient and Realistic RTL Fuzzing
[4] VACO modifies classic ACO to fit the RTL fuzzing scenario. [2401.15967] Instiller: Towards Efficient and Realistic RTL Fuzzing
[5] Instiller reports 79.3% shorter input length than DiFuzzRTL and a 6.7% average execution-speed increase from input instruction distillation. [2401.15967] Instiller: Towards Efficient and Realistic RTL Fuzzing