Abstract:Formal verification has become a well-established part of standard hardware design flows leveraging SAT solvers and model checkers for verification tasks including logical equivalence checking, property checking, and protocol verification. These tools are largely based on all-digital, synchronous, single clock-domain models of hardware behaviour. To address the needs of system-on-chip and multi-core designs, we are […]

Abstract: In this talk, I will describe three approaches to verifying distributed systems using inductive invariants: manual proof, automated proof, and invariant inference. These techniques offer increasing levels of automation, but at some cost. I will argue that the middle technique strikes a good balance for users, and that it is possible for a tool to be […]

Abstract: In this talk we present a systematic effort that can automatically repair firewalls, using the programming by example approach. Firewalls are widely employed to manage and control enterprise networks. Because enterprise-scale firewalls contain hundreds or thousands of policies, ensuring the correctness of firewalls – whether the policies in the firewalls meet the specifications of […]

Abstract: The dynamic nature of JavaScript and its complex semantics make it a difficult target for logic-based verification. In this talk, I will describe JaVerT, a semi-automatic JavaScript Verification Toolchain based on separation logic. JaVerT is aimed at the specialist developer wanting rich, mechanically verified specifications of critical JavaScript code. The specification challenge is to […]

abstract: We are at the dawn of a new age in air traffic control. The airspace is full in the sense that demand for flights exceeds our capacity to add new air traffic. The time-tested current method of air traffic control has hit its scalability limit and must be replaced with a new system that […]

abstract: Software-dependent critical systems that impact daily life are rapidly increasing in number, size, and complexity. Unfortunately, inadequate software and systems engineering can lead to accidents that cause economic disaster, injuries, or even death. There is a growing reliance on development and verification tools to reduce costs, better manage complexity, and to increase confidence in […]

abstract: Modern verification techniques are becoming ever-more powerful and sophisticated, and building tools to implement them is a time-consuming and difficult task. Writing a new verifier to validate each on-paper approach is impractical; for this reason intermediate verification languages such as Boogie and Why3 have become popular over the last decade for implementing research from […]

abstract: Interrupt-driven software is difficult to test and debug, especially when interrupts can be nested and subject to priorities. Interrupts can arrive at arbitrary times, leading to an explosion in the number of cases to be considered. We present a new formal approach to verifying interrupt-driven software based on symbolic execution. The approach leverages recent […]

abstract: Read-copy update (RCU) is a synchronization mechanism that is sometimes used as an alternative to reader-writer locking (among other things) that was added to the Linux kernel in 2002. A similar mechanism was added to Sequent’s DYNIX/ptx parallel UNIX kernel in 1993, and antecedents go back to at least 1980. Although a fully functional […]

Abstract Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) refer to systems in which control, computation and communication converge to achieve complex functionalities. The ubiquitous deployment of cyber-physical systems in safety critical applications including aeronautics, automotive, medical devices and industrial process control, has pressurized the need for the development of automated analysis methods to aid the design of high-confidence systems. The talk will focus on an […]