Applications of Formal Methods

1. Applications of Formal Methods Lenore Zuck, CS Support from NSF, ONR, and SRC • Translation Validation • Backward Compatibility of successive generations of software • Formal proofs that optimizing compilers maintain semantics of programs • Termination proofs of Pointer programs • Property Verification of parameterized systems (bus protocols, cache coherence, &c) • Translation validation verifies each go of the system. Verification conditions that are automatically created are send to theorem provers • Combination of model checking and deductive methods allows to push the envelope of automatic verification of infinite-state systems (for both pointer programs and protocols) • Based on methodology developed, Intel is using MicroFomal to verify backward compatibility of micropgrams (between RISC & CISC) • (Need to develop better methodologies to prove theories that have bit vectors) • IIV is a new tool that allows automatic verification of safety properties of parameterized systems (nothing bad will ever happen) • Researchers at MSR have expressed interest to integrate pointer analysis in their verification tool