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Verified Just-In-Time Compiler on x86

Verified Just-In-Time Compiler on x86
Magnus O. Myreen

This paper presents a method for creating formally correct just-in-time (JIT) compilers. The tractability of our approach is demonstrated through, what we believe is the first, verification of a JIT compiler with respect to a realistic semantics of self-modifying x86 machine code. Our semantics includes a model of the instruction cache. Two versions of the verified JIT compiler are presented: one generates all of the machine code at once, the other one is incremental i.e. produces code on-demand. All proofs have been performed inside the HOL4 theorem prover.

(To appear in next week's POPL.)

I've been enjoying this paper on my commute this week. It's a nice little distillation of some of the basics of the engineering structure of a JITted language and how the pieces fit together in a correct implementation. As JIT compilers become more and more commonplace, I'd like to see them presented in such a way that they're no more scary or daunting -- at least in principle -- than traditional offline compilers. Perhaps a chapter in EoPL4?

By Dave Herman at 2010-01-12 17:56 | Implementation | Semantics | other blogs | 20996 reads

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Self-modifying code

I was impressed by the use of verified, self-modifying x86 machine code. (A JIT is of course self-modifying code.) Another paper that demonstrates realistic, verified, self-modifying code is:

Certified Self-Modifying Code
Hongxu Cai, Zhong Shao, Alexander Vaynberg

This paper presents a simple but novel Hoare-logic-like framework that supports modular verification of general von-Neumann machine code with runtime code manipulation. By dropping the assumption that code memory is fixed and immutable, we are forced to apply local reasoning and separation logic at the very beginning, and treat program code uniformly as regular data structure. We address the interaction between separation and code memory and show how to establish the frame rules for local reasoning even in the presence of SMC. Our framework is realistic, but designed to be highly generic, so that it can support assembly code under all modern CPUs (including both x86 and MIPS). Our system is expressive and fully mechanized. We prove its soundness in the Coq proof assistant and demonstrate its power by certifying a series of realistic examples and applications—all of which can directly run on the SPIM simulator or any stock x86 hardware.

By Rich Dougherty at Wed, 2010-01-13 02:02 | login or register to post comments