A unified memory model for pointers

Authors

Harvey Tuch and Gerwin Klein

    School of Computer Science and Engineering
    University of New South Wales
    Sydney 2052 Australia
    
    NICTA, Sydney, Australia

Abstract

One of the challenges in verifying systems level code is the low-level, untyped view of the machine state that operating systems have. We describe a way to faithfully formalise this view while at the same time providing an easy-to-use, abstract and typed view of memory where possible. We have used this formal memory model to verify parts of the virtual memory subsystem of the L4 high-performance microkernel. All formalisations and proofs have been carried out in the theorem prover Isabelle and the verified code has been integrated into the current implementation of L4.

BibTeX Entry

  @inproceedings{Tuch_Klein_05,
    title            = {A Unified Memory Model for Pointers},
    booktitle        = {12th Int. Conf. Logic for Progr., Artificial Intelligence \& Reasoning},
    author           = {Harvey Tuch and Gerwin Klein},
    year             = {2005},
    month            = {Dec},
    address          = {Montego Bay, Jamaica},
    pages            = {474--488}
  }

Download

• Tuch_Klein_05.pdf