Weak-memory local reasoning

Program logics are formal logics designed to facilitate specification and correctness reasoning for software programs. Separation logic, a recent program logic for C-like programs, has found great success in automated verification due in large part to its embodiment of the principle of local reasoning, in which specifications and proofs are restricted to just those resources—variables, shared memory addresses, locks, etc.—used by the program during execution.

Existing program logics make the strong assumption that all threads agree on the values of shared memory at all times. But, on modern computer architectures, this assumption is unsound for certain shared-memory concurrent programs: namely, those with races. Typically races are considered to be errors, but some programs, like lock-free concurrent data structures, are necessarily racy. Verification of these difficult programs must take into account the weaker models of memory provided by the architectures on which they execute.

This dissertation project seeks to explicate a local reasoning principle for x86-like architectures. The principle is demonstrated with a new program logic for concurrent C-like programs that incorporates ideas from separation logic. The goal of the logic is to allow verification of racy programs like concurrent data structures for which no general-purpose high-level verification techniques exist.