Re:SeL4 Whitepaper [pdf]
by kaba0 on Sunday December 27, 2020 @06:04PM
(#25555026)
What’s your opinion on the scalability of formal methods? Isn’t it still the case that basically formal verification is impossible to do for larger code bases (like at least 10-100x that of sel4 in lines of code) and even sel4 took many many years and experts?
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current tools, verifying C code like seL4? never going to happen. but i'm hopeful about new techniques, things like the work Amal Ahmed http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/amal/ is doing. you don't need to formally verify the entire codebase for basic properties like "can compose with the sel4 proofs" if your runtime/compiler/language/OS is all participating. right now you have to fight against the fact that none of the software of interest is well-understood mechanically by other software.