Towards optimization-safe systems
Xi Wang, Nickolai Zeldovich, M. Frans Kaashoek, Armando Solar-Lezama · 2013
This paper studies an emerging class of software bugs called optimization-unstable code: code that is unexpectedly discarded by compiler optimizations due to undefined behavior in the program. Unstable code is present in many systems, including the Linux kernel and the Postgres database. The consequences of unstable code range from incorrect functionality to missing security checks.