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A unified memory model for pointers

Authors

Harvey Tuch and Gerwin Klein

NICTA, Sydney, Australia
UNSW, 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,
    author           = {Harvey Tuch and Gerwin Klein},
    month            = dec,
    year             = {2005},
    title            = {A Unified Memory Model for Pointers},
    address          = {Montego Bay, Jamaica},
    pages            = {474--488},
    booktitle        = {Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Logic for Programming, Artificial Intelligence
                        and Reasoning},
    paperurl         = {https://ts.data61.csiro.au/publications/papers/Tuch_Klein_05.pdf}
  }

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