A complete formal semantics of x86-64 user-level instruction set architecture

Sandeep Dasgupta, Daejun Park, Theodoros Kasampalis, Vikram S. Adve, Grigore Roşu

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

We present the most complete and thoroughly tested formal semantics of x86-64 to date. Our semantics faithfully formalizes all the non-deprecated, sequential user-level instructions of the x86-64 Haswell instruction set architecture. This totals 3155 instruction variants, corresponding to 774 mnemonics. The semantics is fully executable and has been tested against more than 7,000 instruction-level test cases and the GCC torture test suite. This extensive testing paid off, revealing bugs in both the x86-64 reference manual and other existing semantics. We also illustrate potential applications of our semantics in different formal analyses, and discuss how it can be useful for processor verification.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationPLDI 2019 - Proceedings of the 40th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation
EditorsKathryn S. McKinley, Kathleen Fisher
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages1133-1148
Number of pages16
ISBN (Electronic)9781450367127
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 8 2019
Event40th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation, PLDI 2019 - Phoenix, United States
Duration: Jun 22 2019Jun 26 2019

Publication series

NameProceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI)

Conference

Conference40th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation, PLDI 2019
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityPhoenix
Period6/22/196/26/19

Keywords

  • Formal Semantics
  • ISA specification
  • X86-64

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software

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