Separation Logic for Small-step Cminor

Andrew W. Appel; Sandrine Blazy

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arXiv · 0707.4389

Separation Logic for Small-step Cminor

Andrew W. Appel·Sandrine Blazy

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Abstract

Cminor is a mid-level imperative programming language; there are proved-correct optimizing compilers from C to Cminor and from Cminor to machine language. We have redesigned Cminor so that it is suitable for Hoare Logic reasoning and we have designed a Separation Logic for Cminor. In this paper, we give a small-step semantics (instead of the big-step of the proved-correct compiler) that is motivated by the need to support future concurrent extensions. We detail a machine-checked proof of soundness of our Separation Logic. This is the first large-scale machine-checked proof of a Separation Logic w.r.t. a small-step semantics. The work presented in this paper has been carried out in the Coq proof assistant. It is a first step towards an environment in which concurrent Cminor programs can be verified using Separation Logic and also compiled by a proved-correct compiler with formal end-to-end correctness guarantees.

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Andrew W. Appel, Sandrine Blazy. 2007-07-30. Separation Logic for Small-step Cminor. https://arxiv.org/abs/0707.4389

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