recent.bib

@comment{{This file has been generated by bib2bib 1.98}}

@comment{{Command line: /usr/bin/bib2bib -c recent:"true" -ob recent.bib sewellbib2.bib}}

@inproceedings{Cerberus-PLDI16,
  author = {
Kayvan Memarian and 
Justus Matthiesen and 
James Lingard and
Kyndylan Nienhuis and
David Chisnall and
Robert N.M. Watson and
Peter Sewell
},
  title = {Into the depths of {C}: elaborating the de facto standards},
  abstract = {
C remains central to our computing infrastructure.  It is notionally defined by ISO standards, but in reality the properties of C assumed by systems code and those implemented by compilers have diverged, both from the ISO standards and from each other, and none of these are clearly understood.

We make two contributions to help improve this error-prone situation.  First, we describe an in-depth analysis of the design space for the semantics of pointers and memory in C as it is used in practice.  We articulate many specific questions, build a suite of semantic test cases, gather experimental data from multiple implementations, and survey what C experts believe about the de facto standards.  We identify questions where there is a consensus (either following ISO or differing) and where there are conflicts. We apply all this to an experimental C implemented above capability hardware.  Second, we describe a formal model, Cerberus, for large parts of C.  Cerberus is parameterised on its memory model; it is linkable either with a candidate de facto memory object model, under construction, or with an operational C11 concurrency model; it is defined by elaboration to a much simpler Core language for accessibility, and it is executable as a test oracle on small examples.

This should provide a solid basis for discussion of what mainstream C is now: what programmers and analysis tools can assume and what compilers aim to implement. Ultimately we hope it will be a step towards clear, consistent, and accepted semantics for the various use-cases of C.
},
  optcrossref = {},
  optkey = {},
  conf = {PLDI 2016},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 37th annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation},
  optpages = {},
  year = {2016},
  opteditor = {},
  optvolume = {},
  optnumber = {},
  optseries = {},
  optaddress = {},
  month = jun,
  optorganization = {},
  optpublisher = {},
  note = {PLDI 2016 Distinguished Paper award},
  project = {http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~pes20/cerberus},
  url = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2908080.2908081},
  doi = {10.1145/2908080.2908081},
  pdf = {http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/pes20/cerberus/pldi16.pdf},
  optannote = {},
  topic = {Cerberus},
  recent = {true}
}

@inproceedings{kell_missing_2016,
  author = {Stephen Kell and Dominic P. Mulligan and Peter Sewell},
  title = {The missing link: explaining {ELF} static linking, semantically},
  conf = {OOPSLA 2016},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications},
  series = {OOPSLA 2016},
  year = {2016},
  month = nov,
  location = {Amsterdam, The Netherlands},
  numpages = {17},
  publisher = {ACM},
  address = {New York, NY, USA},
  keywords = {Linking, formal specification, Executable and Linkable Format (ELF), theorem-proving},
  abstract = {Beneath the surface, software usually depends on complex \emph{linker
  behaviour} to work as intended.  Even linking
\texttt{hello\_world.c} is surprisingly involved, and systems software
such as \texttt{libc} and operating system kernels rely on a host of
linker features.  But linking is poorly understood by working
programmers and has largely been neglected by language researchers.

In this paper we survey the many use-cases that linkers support and
the poorly specified \emph{linker speak} by which they are controlled:
metadata in object files, command-line options, and linker-script
language.  We provide the first validated formalisation of a realistic
executable and linkable format (ELF), and capture aspects of the
Application Binary Interfaces for four mainstream platforms (AArch64,
AMD64, Power64, and IA32).  Using these, we develop an executable
specification of static linking, covering (among other things) enough to link
small C programs (we use the example of \textsf{bzip2}) into a correctly
running executable.  We
provide our specification in Lem and Isabelle/HOL forms.  This is the
first formal specification of mainstream linking.  We have used the
Isabelle/HOL version to prove a sample
correctness property for one case of AMD64 ABI relocation,
demonstrating that the specification supports formal proof, and as a
first step towards the much more ambitious goal of verified linking.
Our work should enable several novel strands of research, including
linker-aware verified compilation and program analysis, and better
languages for controlling linking.
},
  url = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2983990.2983996},
  doi = {10.1145/2983990.2983996},
  pdf = {http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~pes20/rems/papers/oopsla-elf-linking-2016.pdf},
  project = {https://github.com/rems-project/linksem},
  topic = {linksem},
  recent = {true}
}

@inproceedings{operational-semantics-c11-2016,
  author = {Kyndylan Nienhuis and Kayvan Memarian and Peter Sewell},
  title = {An operational semantics for {C/C++11} concurrency},
  conf = {OOPSLA 2016},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications},
  location = {Amsterdam, The Netherlands},
  numpages = {18},
  publisher = {ACM},
  address = {New York, NY, USA},
  month = nov,
  year = {2016},
  abstract = {The C/C++11 concurrency model balances two goals: it is relaxed enough to be efficiently implementable and (leaving aside the ``thin-air'' problem) it is strong enough to give useful guarantees to programmers. It is mathematically precise and has been used in verification research and compiler testing. However, the model is expressed in an axiomatic style, as predicates on complete candidate executions. This suffices for computing the set of allowed executions of a small litmus test, but it does not directly support the incremental construction of executions of larger programs. It is also at odds with conventional operational semantics, as used implicitly in the rest of the C/C++ standards.

Our main contribution is the development of an operational model for C/C++11 concurrency. This covers all the features of the previous formalised axiomatic model, and we have a mechanised proof that the two are equivalent, in Isabelle/HOL. We also integrate this semantics with an operational semantics for sequential C (described elsewhere); the combined semantics can incrementally execute programs in a small fragment of C.

Doing this uncovered several new aspects of the C/C++11 model: we show that one cannot build an equivalent operational model that simply follows program order, sequential consistent order, or the synchronises-with order. The first negative result is forced by hardware-observable behaviour, but the latter two are not, and so might be ameliorated by changing C/C++11. More generally, we hope that this work, with its focus on incremental construction of executions, will inform the future design of new concurrency models.},
  url = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2983990.2983997},
  doi = {10.1145/2983990.2983997},
  pdf = {http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~pes20/rems/papers/nienhuis-oopsla-2016.pdf},
  topic = {c11},
  recent = {true}
}

@inproceedings{mixed17,
  author = {Shaked Flur and Susmit Sarkar and Christopher Pulte and Kyndylan Nienhuis and Luc Maranget and Kathryn E. Gray and Ali Sezgin and Mark Batty and Peter Sewell},
  title = {Mixed-size Concurrency: {ARM}, {POWER}, {C/C++11}, and {SC}},
  conf = {POPL 2017},
  booktitle = {The 44st Annual {ACM} {SIGPLAN-SIGACT} Symposium on Principles of
               Programming Languages,  Paris, France},
  year = {2017},
  month = jan,
  pages = {429--442},
  numpages = {14},
  opturl = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/3009837.3009839},
  doi = {10.1145/3009837.3009839},
  project = {http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/pes20/popl17/},
  abstract = {Previous work on the semantics of relaxed shared-memory concurrency has only considered the case in which each load reads the data of exactly one store.  In practice, however, multiprocessors support mixed-size accesses, and these are used by systems software and (to some degree) exposed at the C/C++ language level.  A semantic foundation for software, therefore, has to address them.


We investigate the mixed-size behaviour of ARMv8 and IBM POWER architectures and implementations: by experiment, by developing semantic models, by testing the correspondence between these, and by discussion with ARM and IBM staff.  This turns out to be surprisingly subtle, and on the way we have to revisit the fundamental concepts of coherence and sequential consistency, which change in this setting.  In particular, we show that adding a memory barrier between each instruction does not restore sequential consistency.  We go on to extend the C/C++11 model to support non-atomic mixed-size memory accesses.


This is a necessary step towards semantics for real-world shared-memory concurrent code, beyond litmus tests.
},
  pdf = {http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~pes20/popl17/mixed-size.pdf},
  topic = {Power_and_ARM},
  topictwo = {ISA_semantics},
  recent = {true}
}

@inproceedings{armv8-mca,
  author = {Christopher Pulte and Shaked Flur and Will Deacon and Jon French and Susmit Sarkar and Peter Sewell},
  title = {{Simplifying ARM Concurrency: Multicopy-atomic Axiomatic and Operational Models for ARMv8}},
  optcrossref = {},
  optkey = {},
  conf = {POPL 2018},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 45th ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages},
  optpages = {},
  year = {2018},
  opteditor = {},
  optvolume = {},
  optnumber = {},
  optseries = {},
  optaddress = {},
  doi = {10.1145/3158107},
  month = jan,
  optorganization = {},
  optpublisher = {},
  optnote = {Draft},
  optannote = {},
  pdf = {http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~pes20/armv8-mca/armv8-mca-draft.pdf},
  project = {http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~pes20/armv8-mca/},
  abstract = {ARM has a relaxed memory model, previously specified in informal prose for ARMv7 and ARMv8.  Over time, and partly due to work building formal semantics for ARM concurrency, it has become clear that some of the complexity of the model is not justified by the potential benefits.  In particular, the model was originally \emph{non-multicopy-atomic}: writes could become visible to some other threads before becoming visible to all --- but this has not been exploited in production implementations, the corresponding potential hardware optimisations are thought to have insufficient benefits in the ARM context, and it gives rise to subtle complications when combined with other ARMv8 features.  The ARMv8 architecture has therefore been revised: it now has a multicopy-atomic model.  It has also been simplified in other respects, including more straightforward notions of dependency, and the architecture now includes a formal concurrency model.

In this paper we detail these changes and discuss their motivation. We define two formal concurrency models: an operational one, simplifying the Flowing model of Flur et al., and the axiomatic model of the revised ARMv8 specification. The models were developed by an academic group and by ARM staff, respectively, and this extended collaboration partly motivated the above changes. We prove the equivalence of the two models. The operational model is integrated into an executable exploration tool with new web interface, demonstrated by exhaustively checking the possible behaviours of a loop-unrolled version of a Linux kernel lock implementation, a previously known bug due to unprevented speculation, and a fixed version.},
  topic = {Power_and_ARM},
  topictwo = {ISA_semantics},
  recent = {true}
}

@inproceedings{cerberus-popl2019,
  author = {Kayvan Memarian and Victor B. F. Gomes and Brooks Davis and Stephen Kell and Alexander Richardson and Robert N. M. Watson and Peter Sewell},
  title = {Exploring {C} Semantics and Pointer Provenance},
  optcrossref = {},
  optkey = {},
  conf = {POPL 2019},
  booktitle = {Proc. 46th ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages},
  optbooktitle = {},
  year = {2019},
  opteditor = {},
  optvolume = {},
  optnumber = {},
  optseries = {},
  optpages = {},
  month = jan,
  optaddress = {},
  optorganization = {},
  optpublisher = {},
  note = {Proc. ACM Program. Lang. 3, POPL, Article 67},
  optannote = {},
  doi = {10.1145/3290380},
  pdf = {http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/pes20/cerberus/cerberus-popl2019.pdf},
  supplementarymaterial = {http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/pes20/cerberus/supplementary-material-popl2019},
  topic = {Cerberus},
  project = {http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~pes20/cerberus},
  abstract = {The semantics of pointers and memory objects in C has been a vexed question for many years.  C values cannot be treated as either purely abstract or purely concrete entities: the language exposes their representations, but compiler optimisations rely on analyses that reason about provenance and initialisation status, not just runtime representations. The ISO WG14 standard leaves much of this unclear, and in some respects differs with de facto standard usage --- which itself is difficult to investigate.

In this paper we explore the possible source-language semantics for memory objects and pointers, in ISO C and in C as it is used and implemented in practice, focussing especially on pointer provenance.  We aim to, as far as possible, reconcile the ISO C standard, mainstream compiler behaviour, and the semantics relied on by the corpus of existing C code.  We present two coherent proposals, tracking provenance via integers and not; both address many design questions. We highlight some pros and cons and open questions, and illustrate the discussion with a library of test cases.  We make our semantics executable as a test oracle, integrating it with the Cerberus semantics for much of the rest of C, which we have made substantially more complete and robust, and equipped with a web-interface GUI.  This allows us to experimentally assess our proposals on those test cases.  To assess their viability with respect to larger bodies of C code, we analyse the changes required and the resulting behaviour for a port of FreeBSD to CHERI, a research architecture supporting hardware capabilities, which (roughly speaking) traps on the memory safety violations which our proposals deem undefined behaviour. We also develop a new runtime instrumentation tool to detect possible provenance violations in normal C code, and apply it to some of the SPEC benchmarks.  We compare our proposal with a source-language variant of the twin-allocation LLVM semantics proposal of Lee et al.  Finally, we describe ongoing interactions with WG14, exploring how our proposals could be incorporated into the ISO standard.
},
  recent = {true}
}

@inproceedings{sail-popl2019,
  author = {Alasdair Armstrong and Thomas Bauereiss and Brian Campbell and Alastair Reid and Kathryn E. Gray and Robert M. Norton and Prashanth Mundkur and Mark Wassell and Jon French and Christopher Pulte and Shaked Flur and Ian Stark and Neel Krishnaswami and Peter Sewell},
  title = {{ISA} Semantics for {ARMv8-A, RISC-V, and CHERI-MIPS}},
  optcrossref = {},
  optkey = {},
  conf = {POPL 2019},
  booktitle = {Proc. 46th ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages},
  optbooktitle = {},
  year = {2019},
  opteditor = {},
  optvolume = {},
  optnumber = {},
  optseries = {},
  optpages = {},
  month = jan,
  optaddress = {},
  optorganization = {},
  optpublisher = {},
  note = {Proc. ACM Program. Lang. 3, POPL, Article 71},
  optnote = {},
  optannote = {},
  doi = {10.1145/3290384},
  abstract = {Architecture specifications notionally define the fundamental interface between hardware and software: the envelope of allowed behaviour for processor implementations, and the basic assumptions for software development and verification.  But in practice, they are typically prose and pseudocode documents, not rigorous or executable artifacts, leaving software and verification on shaky ground.

In this paper, we present rigorous semantic models for the sequential behaviour of large parts of the mainstream ARMv8-A, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures, and the research CHERI-MIPS architecture, that are complete enough to boot operating systems, variously Linux, FreeBSD, or seL4.  Our ARMv8-A models are automatically translated from authoritative ARM-internal definitions, and (in one variant) tested against the ARM Architecture Validation Suite.

We do this using a custom language for ISA semantics, Sail, with a lightweight dependent type system, that supports automatic generation of emulator code in C and OCaml, and automatic generation of proof-assistant definitions for Isabelle, HOL4, and (currently only for MIPS) Coq.  We use the former for validation, and to assess specification coverage.  To demonstrate the usability of the latter, we prove (in Isabelle) correctness of a purely functional characterisation of ARMv8-A address translation.  We moreover integrate the RISC-V model into the RMEM tool for (user-mode) relaxed-memory concurrency exploration.  We prove (on paper) the soundness of the core Sail type system.

We thereby take a big step towards making the architectural abstraction actually well-defined, establishing foundations for verification and reasoning.
},
  pdf = {http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/pes20/sail/sail-popl2019.pdf},
  supplementarymaterial = {http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/pes20/sail/popl2019.html},
  topic = {ISA_semantics},
  project = {http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~pes20/sail/},
  recent = {true}
}

@article{tcp3draft,
  optkey = {},
  author = {Steve Bishop and Matthew Fairbairn and Hannes Mehnert and Michael Norrish and Tom Ridge and Peter Sewell and Michael Smith and Keith Wansbrough},
  title = {Engineering with Logic: Rigorous Test-Oracle Specification and Validation for {TCP/IP} and the {Sockets API}},
  journal = {J. ACM},
  opthowpublished = {},
  optmonth = {},
  year = {2018},
  month = aug,
  note = {Accepted for publication},
  optannote = {},
  pdf = {http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~pes20/Netsem/paper3.pdf},
  project = {http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~pes20/Netsem/index.html},
  recent = {true},
  topic = {netsem},
  abstract = {
Conventional computer engineering relies on test-and-debug development
processes, with the behaviour of common interfaces described (at best)
with prose specification documents.  But prose specifications cannot be used in
test-and-debug development in any automated way, and prose is a poor
medium for expressing complex (and loose) specifications. 

The TCP/IP protocols and Sockets API are a good example of this:
they play a vital role in modern communication and computation, and
interoperability between implementations is essential.  But what
exactly they are is surprisingly obscure: their original development
focussed on ``rough consensus and running code'', augmented by prose
RFC specifications that do not precisely define what it means for an
implementation to be correct.  Ultimately, the actual standard is the
de facto one of the common implementations, including, for example,
the 15\,000--20\,000 lines of the BSD implementation --- optimised and
multithreaded C code, time-dependent, with asynchronous event
handlers, intertwined with the operating system, and
security-critical.

This paper reports on work done in the \emph{Netsem} project to
develop lightweight mathematically rigorous techniques that can be
applied to such systems: to specify their behaviour precisely (but
loosely enough to permit the required implementation variation) and to
test whether these specifications and the implementations correspond,
with specifications that are \emph{executable as test oracles}.
We developed post-hoc specifications of TCP, UDP, and the Sockets API, both of
the service that they provide to applications (in terms of TCP
bidirectional stream connections), and of the internal operation of
the protocol (in terms of TCP segments and UDP datagrams), together
with a testable abstraction function relating the two.  These specifications
are rigorous, detailed, readable, with broad coverage, and are rather
accurate.  Working within a general-purpose proof assistant (HOL4), we
developed \emph{language idioms} (within higher-order logic) in which
to write the specifications: operational semantics with
nondeterminism, time, system calls, monadic relational programming,
etc.  We followed an \emph{experimental semantics} approach,
validating the specifications against several thousand traces captured
from three implementations (FreeBSD, Linux, and WinXP).  Many
differences between these were identified, and a number of bugs.
Validation was done using a special-purpose \emph{symbolic model
  checker} programmed above HOL4.

Having demonstrated that our logic-based engineering techniques
suffice for handling real-world protocols, we argue that similar
techniques could be applied to future critical software infrastructure
at design time, leading to cleaner designs and (via
specification-based testing) more robust and predictable
implementations.  In cases where specification looseness can be
controlled, this should be possible with lightweight techniques,
without the need for a general-purpose proof assistant, at relatively
little cost.
}
}