Proof assistants at the hardware-software interface (invited talk)
Adam J. Chlipala · 2020
Some of the earliest applications of proof assistants were to correctness of digital hardware designs, but the subject doesn’t come up too frequently today at venues like CPP. I will try to make the case that proof assistants are a crucial tool for resolving both classical problems and new ones at the hardware-software interface. That is, it is important to understand exactly what guarantees a processor exports to software, it is important to verify that hardware exports those guarantees correctly, and it is important to prove end-to-end theorems covering both hardware and software. A few social developments make this an exciting time to tackle these problems: open instruction sets and open-source hardware designs are growing in real-world relevance, and surprising new classes of security vulnerabilities have gotten more practitioners thinking about precise hardware-software contracts. I will sketch the state of the research area and go into detail on a few of my own related projects. An ancillary goal is to convey that programming or proving digital hardware is a lot like programming or proving software, with a few fun distinctions, so more of the CPP crowd might want to give it a try!