Title :
VCC: Contract-based modular verification of concurrent C
Author :
Dahlweid, Markus ; Moskal, Michal ; Santen, Thomas ; Tobies, Stephan ; Schulte, Wolfram
Author_Institution :
Eur. Microsoft Innovation Center, Aachen
Abstract :
Most system level software is written in C and executed concurrently. Because such software is often critical for system reliability, it is an ideal target for formal verification. Annotated C and the Verified C Compiler (VCC) form the first modular sound verification methodology for concurrent C that scales to real-world production code. VCC is integrated in Microsoft Visual Studio and it comes with support for verification debugging: an explorer for counter-examples of failed proofs helps to find errors in code or specifications, and a prover log analyzer helps debugging proof attempts that exhaust available resources (memory, time). VCC is currently used to verify the core of Microsoft Hyper-V, consisting of 50,000 lines of system-level C code.
Keywords :
C language; formal verification; program compilers; program debugging; software reliability; Microsoft Hyper-V; Microsoft visual studio; annotated C; contract-based modular verification; formal verification; log analyzer; modular sound verification methodology; real-world production code; system level software; system reliability; system-level C code; verification debugging; verified C compiler; Concurrent computing; Contracts; Data structures; Debugging; Formal verification; Production; Reliability; Software systems; Technological innovation; Yarn;
Conference_Titel :
Software Engineering - Companion Volume, 2009. ICSE-Companion 2009. 31st International Conference on
Conference_Location :
Vancouver, BC
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4244-3495-4
DOI :
10.1109/ICSE-COMPANION.2009.5071046