Related papers: Abstract Compilation for Verification of Numerical…

Computer-based control systems have grown in size, complexity, distribution and criticality. In this paper a methodology is presented to perform an abstract testing of such large control systems in an efficient way: an abstract test is…

Monotonic abstraction is a technique introduced in model checking parameterized distributed systems in order to cope with transitions containing global conditions within guards. The technique has been re-interpreted in a declarative setting…

This paper presents the use of testing, credible compilation/translation validation, verification, and audits in the Axon compiler. Axon comes with fully machine checked proofs that guarantee the correctness of the generated code. All code…

Fully automated verification of large-scale software and hardware systems is arguably the holy grail of formal methods. Large language models (LLMs) have recently demonstrated their potential for enhancing the degree of automation in formal…

Formal verification tools are often developed by experts for experts; as a result, their usability by programmers with little formal methods experience may be severely limited. In this paper, we discuss this general phenomenon with…

These notes outline a formal method for program verification of numerical computation. It forms the basis of the software package VPC in its initial phase of development. Much of the style of presentation is in the form of notes that…

Code metrics are easy to define, but not so easy to justify. It is hard to prove that a metric is valid, i.e., that measured numerical values imply anything on the vaguely defined, yet crucial software properties such as complexity and…

Predicate abstraction is a key enabling technology for applying finite-state model checkers to programs written in mainstream languages. It has been used very successfully for debugging sequential system-level C code. Although model…

Deductive verification has become a mature paradigm for the verification of industrial software. Applying deductive verification, however, requires that every function in the code base is annotated with a function contract specifying its…

Even competent programmers make mistakes. Automatic verification can detect errors, but leaves the frustrating task of finding the erroneous line of code to the user. This paper presents an automatic approach for identifying potential error…

Abstraction-Carrying Code (ACC) has recently been proposed as a framework for proof-carrying code (PCC) in which the code supplier provides a program together with an abstraction (or abstract model of the program) whose validity entails…

Scientific software is one of the key elements for reproducible research. However, classic publications and related scientific software are typically not (sufficiently) linked, and it lacks tools to jointly explore these artefacts. In this…

Scientific computing programs often undergo aggressive compiler optimization to achieve high performance and efficient resource utilization. While performance is critical, we also need to ensure that these optimizations are correct. In this…

A promising research direction in enabling LLMs to generate consistently correct code involves addressing their inability to properly estimate program execution, particularly for code they generate. In this work, we demonstrate that Code…

Techniques for runtime verification often utilise specification languages that are (i) reasonably expressive, and (ii) relatively abstract (i.e. they operate on a level of abstraction that separates them from the system being monitored).…

Symbolic execution is a software verification technique symbolically running programs and thereby checking for bugs. Ranged symbolic execution performs symbolic execution on program parts, so called path ranges, in parallel. Due to the…

Verifying specifications for large-scale modern engineering systems can be a time-consuming task, as most formal verification methods are limited to systems of modest size. Recently, contract-based design and verification has been proposed…

We explore the possibility of accelerating the formal verification of classical programs with a quantum computer. A common source of security flaws stems from the existence of common programming errors like use after free, null-pointer…

Predictive models are fundamental to engineering reliable software systems. However, designing conservative, computable approximations for the behavior of programs (static analyses) remains a difficult and error-prone process for modern…

High-level synthesis (HLS) is a key component for the hardware acceleration of applications, especially thanks to the diffusion of reconfigurable devices in many domains, from data centers to edge devices. HLS reduces development times by…