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Formal verification of a realistic compiler

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Xavier LeroyAuthors Info & Claims

Communications of the ACM, Volume 52, Issue 7

Pages 107 - 115

https://doi.org/10.1145/1538788.1538814

Published: 01 July 2009 Publication History

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Abstract

This paper reports on the development and formal verification (proof of semantic preservation) of CompCert, a compiler from Clight (a large subset of the C programming language) to PowerPC assembly code, using the Coq proof assistant both for programming the compiler and for proving its correctness. Such a verified compiler is useful in the context of critical software and its formal verification: the verification of the compiler guarantees that the safety properties proved on the source code hold for the executable compiled code as well.

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Cited By

Poiret JGilbert GMaillard KPédrot PSozeau MTabareau NTanter É(2025)All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Sort Polymorphism for Proof AssistantsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/37049129:POPL(2253-2281)Online publication date: 9-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3704912
Xu QSanan DHou ZLuan XWatt CLiu Y(2025)Generically Automating Separation Logic by Functors, Homomorphisms, and ModulesProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/37049039:POPL(1992-2024)Online publication date: 9-Jan-2025
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Zhang YKoenig JShao ZWang Y(2025)Unifying Compositional Verification and Certified Compilation with a Three-Dimensional Refinement AlgebraProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/37049009:POPL(1903-1933)Online publication date: 9-Jan-2025
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Formal verification of a realistic compiler

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cover image Communications of the ACM

Communications of the ACM Volume 52, Issue 7

Barbara Liskov: ACM's A.M. Turing Award Winner

July 2009

141 pages

ISSN:0001-0782

EISSN:1557-7317

DOI:10.1145/1538788

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2009 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 01 July 2009

Published in CACM Volume 52, Issue 7

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Cited By

Poiret JGilbert GMaillard KPédrot PSozeau MTabareau NTanter É(2025)All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Sort Polymorphism for Proof AssistantsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/37049129:POPL(2253-2281)Online publication date: 9-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3704912
Xu QSanan DHou ZLuan XWatt CLiu Y(2025)Generically Automating Separation Logic by Functors, Homomorphisms, and ModulesProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/37049039:POPL(1992-2024)Online publication date: 9-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3704903
Zhang YKoenig JShao ZWang Y(2025)Unifying Compositional Verification and Certified Compilation with a Three-Dimensional Refinement AlgebraProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/37049009:POPL(1903-1933)Online publication date: 9-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3704900
Kim YLee SKim YHur C(2025)VeriRT: An End-to-End Verification Framework for Real-Time Distributed SystemsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/37048979:POPL(1812-1839)Online publication date: 9-Jan-2025
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Chappe NHenrio LZakowski YStark KTimany ABlazy STabareau N(2025)Monadic Interpreters for Concurrent Memory ModelsProceedings of the 14th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Certified Programs and Proofs10.1145/3703595.3705890(283-298)Online publication date: 10-Jan-2025
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Meier WJensen MPichon-Pharabod JSpitters BStark KTimany ABlazy STabareau N(2025)CertiCoq-Wasm: A Verified WebAssembly Backend for CertiCoqProceedings of the 14th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Certified Programs and Proofs10.1145/3703595.3705879(127-139)Online publication date: 10-Jan-2025
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Sun XMa WGu JMa ZChajed THowell JLattuada APadon OSuresh LSzekeres AXu TGavrilovska ATerry D(2024)AnvilProceedings of the 18th USENIX Conference on Operating Systems Design and Implementation10.5555/3691938.3691973(649-666)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2024
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