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Observation-Based Concurrent Program Logic for Relaxed Memory Consistency Models

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Book cover Programming Languages and Systems (APLAS 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 10017))

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Abstract

Concurrent program logics are frameworks for constructing proofs, which ensure that concurrent programs work correctly. However, most conventional concurrent program logics do not consider the complexities of modern memory structures, and the proofs in the logics do not ensure that programs will work correctly. To the best of our knowledge, Independent Reads Independent Writes (IRIW), which is known to have non-intuitive behavior under relaxed memory consistency models, has not been fully studied under the context of concurrent program logics. One reason is the gap between theoretical memory consistency models that program logics can handle and the realistic memory consistency models adopted by actual computer architectures. In this paper, we propose observation variables and invariants that fill this gap, releasing us from the need to construct operational semantics and logic for each specific memory consistency model. We describe general operational semantics for relaxed memory consistency models, define concurrent program logic sound to the operational semantics, show that observation invariants can be formalized as axioms of the logic, and verify IRIW under an observation invariant. We also obtain a novel insight through constructing the logic. To define logic that is sound to the operational semantics, we dismiss shared variables in programs from assertion languages, and adopt variables observed by threads. This suggests that the so-called bird’s-eye view of the whole computing system disturbs the soundness of the logic.

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Acknowledgments

Some definitions in this paper are inspired by Qiwen Xu’s PhD thesis [35]. The authors would like to thank him for answering our questions respectfully. The authors also thank the anonymous reviewers for several comments to improve the paper. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 16K21335.

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  1. STAIR Lab, Chiba Institute of Technology, 2-17-1 Tsudanuma, Narashino, Chiba, 275-0016, Japan

    Tatsuya Abe & Toshiyuki Maeda

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  1. Tatsuya Abe
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  2. Toshiyuki Maeda
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Correspondence to Tatsuya Abe .

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  1. Kyoto University , Kyoto, Japan

    Atsushi Igarashi

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Abe, T., Maeda, T. (2016). Observation-Based Concurrent Program Logic for Relaxed Memory Consistency Models. In: Igarashi, A. (eds) Programming Languages and Systems. APLAS 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10017. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47958-3_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47958-3_4

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