Generic Authenticated Data Structures, Formally

Authenticated data structures are a technique for outsourcing data storage and maintenance to an untrusted server. The server is required to produce an efficiently checkable and cryptographically secure proof that it carried out precisely the requested computation. Recently, Miller et al. [https://doi.org/10.1145/2535838.2535851] demonstrated how to support a wide range of such data structures by integrating an authentication construct as a first class citizen in a functional programming language. In this paper, we put this work to the test of formalization in the Isabelle proof assistant. With Isabelle\u27s help, we uncover and repair several mistakes and modify the small-step semantics to perform call-by-value evaluation rather than requiring terms to be in administrative normal form

The design and implementation of a verification technique for GPU Kernels

We present a technique for the formal verification of GPU kernels, addressing two classes of correctness properties: data races and barrier divergence. Our approach is founded on a novel formal operational semantics for GPU kernels termed synchronous, delayed visibility (SDV) semantics, which captures the execution of a GPU kernel by multiple groups of threads. The SDV semantics provides operational definitions for barrier divergence and for both inter- and intra-group data races. We build on the semantics to develop a method for reducing the task of verifying a massively parallel GPU kernel to that of verifying a sequential program. This completely avoids the need to reason about thread interleavings, and allows existing techniques for sequential program verification to be leveraged. We describe an efficient encoding of data race detection and propose a method for automatically inferring the loop invariants that are required for verification. We have implemented these techniques as a practical verification tool, GPUVerify, that can be applied directly to OpenCL and CUDA source code. We evaluate GPUVerify with respect to a set of 162 kernels drawn from public and commercial sources. Our evaluation demonstrates that GPUVerify is capable of efficient, automatic verification of a large number of real-world kernels

Formal SOS-Proofs for the Lambda-Calculus

We describe in this paper formalisations for the properties of weakening, type-substitutivity, subject-reduction and termination of the usual big-step evaluation relation. Our language is the lambda-calculus whose simplicity allows us to show actual theorem-prover code of the formal proofs. The formalisations are done in Nominal Isabelle, a definitional extention of the theorem prover Isabelle/HOL. The point of these formalisations is to be as close as possible to the “pencil-and-paper ” proofs for these properties, but of course be completely rigorous. We describe where Nominal Isabelle is of great help with such formalisations and where one has to invest additional effort in order to obtain formal proofs