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A Guard-Verified Version of M1
or
A Very Simplified Model of the Java Virtual Machine,
including
a Bytecode Interpreter,
a Bytecode Verifier,
a Proof that the Bytecode Verifier Insures Safety,
Sample Correctness Proofs for Many Bytecode Programs,
a Verifying Compiler from mini-Lisp to M1 Bytecode, and
a Proof that the Model is Turing Machine Equivalent
J Strother Moore
[last update: March, 2013]
Heads-Up!
This is the guard verified version of M1: we characterize a well-formed M1
state and verify that well-formed code preserves such states. But there is
an earlier (and simpler to understand) version of M1 among the ACL2 Community
Books on the directory books/models/jvm/m1.
The guard verified version of M1 is semantically equivalent to the earlier
version of M1. All the code proofs there are reproduced here for
completeness. In addition, certain files have been added here to specify and
verify the guards on the M1 model.
As of Version 6.3 of ACL2 this directory and the earlier one were
intellectually identical except for the issue of guards: both included the
same bytecode programs, the same correctness theorems of those programs, and
the proof that M1 is Turing machine equivalent. Guards complicate the
presentation of the model but don't effect subsequent proofs except insofar
as the lemma database required to verify the guards slightly changes the
environment in which subsequent proofs are performed. Indeed, only four
of the earlier files were changed:
script.lsp -- includes a different M1 defpkg so that NTH and UPDATE-NTH
are the native ACL2 versions
m1.lisp -- the definition of M1 now includes guards
tmi-reductions.lisp -- now omits one lemma from the earlier version
defsys-utilities.lisp -- now omits one lemma from the earlier version
The vast majority of the material here is found verbatim on the earlier
directory.
However, as time goes on it would not surprise me if new results were added
just to the guard verified version of M1.
But even if that happens, if you're looking just to get a sense of the M1
model and how we prove M1 bytecode programs correct with it, I advise you to
look at the earlier version.
Summary
This is the README file for the guard-verified version of the M1 machine model.
M1 is a simple stack machine that is suggestive of the JVM. It supports only
nine ``bytecode'' instructions and provides only two interesting resources: a
finite number of local variable values (thought of as a local variable
``array'' but actually a list) and an unbounded pushdown stack.
M1 differs from the JVM in so many ways it is pointless to try to list them.
But so that readers will not think I think M1 is a model of the JVM (!) let
me say that (a) the instruction stream in M1 is a list of fully parsed
symbolic instructions, not bytes, (b) the only data type supported is
integers, (c) integers are unbounded, (d) the only instructions modeled are
the analogues of ILOAD, ISTORE, ICONST, IADD, ISUB, IMUL, IFEQ, GOTO, and
HALT (instead of IRETURN), (e) there is no heap, (f) there are no Objects,
(g) there are no methods, classes, or class tables -- just a single parsed
bytecode program, (h) there are no threads or monitors, and (i) there are no
exceptions. Otherwise, it's just like the JVM (!).
Nevertheless, for many years my students have found M1 a good introduction to
the JVM and have extended M1 in countless ways to ``grow it up'' into a
realistic JVM model. This process was brought to its stunning conclusion by
Habing Liu who developed the M6 model, capable of accurately executing most
J2ME compiled Java programs (except those with significant I/O or
floating-point). See
Hanbing Liu, "Formal Specification and Verification of a JVM and its Bytecode
Verifier," PhD Dissertation, Computer Science Department, University of Texas
at Austin, August, 2006.
One can think of the books on this directory as being partitioned into
three sections:
Section 1: definition and guard-verification of the M1 machine, including a
``verifier'' for checking that a program is well-formed, akin to the JVM's
bytecode verifier,
Section 2: use of the M1 model to verify the functional correctness of some
simple M1 bytecode programs, and
Section 3: proof that M1 can do anything a Turing machine can do, i.e., that it
is Turing Equivalent (given the thesis that it is no more powerful than
Turing machines!).
Operational Information
To re-certify all the books on this directory,
(ld "script.lsp" :ld-pre-eval-print t)
See script.lsp for the defpkg for the "M1" symbol package, in which all this
work is done.
Aside from several new files to support guards, and the provision of guards in
the m1.lisp file, only three files were changed from the M1 model released with
ACL2 Version 6.1:
tmi-reductions.lisp -- one lemma was deleted (and simply moved into
good-statep.lisp where it was needed earlier in the recertifications
sequence)
defsys-utilities.lisp -- omits a now unnecessary lemma
script.lsp -- includes new M1 defpkg and commands for guard verification
certification
About Section 1:
M1 is a very simple virtual machine providing local variables, a pushdown
stack, and an execute-only program composed of the instructions ILOAD, ISTORE,
ICONST, IADD, ISUB, IMUL, GOTO, IFEQ, and HALT. M1 was developed as a
pedagogical introduction to machine modeling in ACL2, techniques for proving
properties of such models, and techniques for proving code correct. The ``I''
prefix for many of the instructions, which in the JVM would indicate that the
instruction manipulates 32-bit int data, is misleading here. Those names were
chosen to facilitate the students looking up the names in the Sun JVM
specification and comparing the informal descriptions to their formal
counterparts. All of the arithmetic instructions here operate correctly on
unbounded rationals.
Historically, the books here were developed by the author from 1997 through the
present as part of an undergraduate course on formal modeling techniques. The
course culminates in the exploration of a very detailed model of the Java
Virtual Machine. Many students, TAs, and research colleagues share
responsibility for developing these techniques over decades of machine modeling
and code proof techniques by many members of the Boyer-Moore user community.
If M1 is considered a very simplified model of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM),
the functions guarding it are a very simplified model of Java's bytecode
verifier: the guard guarantees that bytecode programs will ``stay in the
sandbox,'' i.e., do not add non-numbers, jump outside the bounds of the
program, or access non-existent variables or stack locations. Verifying the M1
guards is akin to verifying the correctness of the bytecode verifier.
How does this m1 differ from earlier unguarded M1 models, specifically the file
books/model/jvm/m1/m1.lisp released with ACL2 Version 6.1? The functions in
the unguarded model do not have have guards while the same functions here do
have guards. Logically, corresponding definitions are identical.
For example, consider the stack manipulation functions, top and pop. Logically
they are defined in the unguarded and guarded books to be car and cdr,
respectively. They are unguarded in books/model/jvm/m1/m1.lisp but guarded
here; each has a guard requiring that the stack be well-formed (a true list of
rationals) and non-empty. Because ACL2 requires that the guard for a function
be exhibited at the time the function is defined it was impossible to produce a
guard verified version of m1.lisp without editing the text in m1.lisp to insert
guards.
To preserve, as much as possible, the presentation of the earlier unguarded M1
we define in one book all the functions we need to specify the guards, and we
specify in another book all the lemmas we need to verify those guards. We then
sandwich the guarded version of m1.lisp between them. Specifically, the
``new'' books are:
* good-statep.lisp -- define the invariant good-statep, which recognizes
well-formed M1 states; good-statep may be considered a simple example of a
bytecode verifier
* m1.lisp -- define the M1 machine interpreter
* verify-guards.lisp -- verify that M1 respects the good-statep invariant in
two senses:
- M1 never does anything ``unexpected'' to a state (e.g., encounter an
undefined instruction, access a non-existent local variable, perform
arithmetic on a non-number, jump to a non-existent location, or attempt to
pop something off an empty stack). In ACL2 parlance, this is ``guard
verification'';
- M1 maintains the good-statep invariant (e.g., when given a well formed
state it returns one).
Many ACL2 users add guards to their functions to make them run faster. We are
not interested in that motivation here. We added guards simply to specify our
expectations on the arguments of our functions -- largely for pedagogical
purposes. In addition, the exercise of adding guards is a good way to
investigate how one formalizes and verifies a static checker like the bytecode
verifier. If our interest were in making M1 run faster on concrete data, the
first change would have been to abandon the repeated use of make-state in our
semantic functions and adopt the single-threaded object (stobj) paradigm. We
stick with the make-state paradigm because we feel it is pedagogically clearer.
About Section 2:
After defining M1 and verifying its guards, we use m1.lisp to verify many
simple M1 programs. In these exercises we do not exploit the fact that M1 is
guard verified: we prove that the given bytecode, when interpreted by the M1
logical machinery, returns its specified answer, whether or not the initial
state (and bytecode) satisfy the bytecode verifier. Indeed, sometimes the
bytecode does NOT satisfy the bytecode verifier -- and yet still operates
provably correctly on the unguarded M1.
One such example is funny-fact.lisp, which computes factorial of n by pushing
n, n-1, n-2, ..., 2, 1 onto the stack in one loop and then multiplying them
together in a second loop. The javac compiler would never generate such code.
The Java programmer does not have direct access to the JVM operand stack. This
bytecode violates the bytecode verifier because the verifier requires that the
depth of the operand stack be fixed for each pc. Both the actual bytecode
verifier and our simplification of it insist on this restriction. For example,
the guard on the function top, which returns the topmost element of the operand
stack, requires that the stack be non-empty (have a non-zero depth) whenever
top is used. Thus, the IMUL instruction, for example, does not check the stack
depth. Instead, the good-statep predicate insures that whenever an IMUL is
encountered there are at least two things on the stack. It does this by
constructing a ``stack map'' via an abstract interpreter-like process that
walks the code calculating the stack depth at each location.
The actual JVM solves the stack problem the same way. The operand stack is
used merely to evaluate expressions and hence its depth is always 0 on the
boundaries of Java statements and, mid-statement, is limited to a fixed size
determined by the amount of function/operator nesting in the expression being
evaluated. By insisting on this, the actual JVM can compute the maximal amount
of stack space needed for a given method invocation and hence detect all stack
overflows by checking only on method invocation. Nevertheless, an actual JVM
would operate correctly on funny-fact.lisp (until stack overflow wrecked the
image) even though the Java compiler would never generate that bytecode.
We generally prove total correctness by the ``clock function'' method: if you
run a certain (constructively given) number of steps from a
certain (constructively given) initial state, you arrive at a state that is
halted and that has the expected answer on top of the stack. In addition, we
generally prove that the starting state satisfies the invariants of our
``bytecode verifier,'' although this is not necessary to the functional
correctness proof. We prove functional correctness of one program that
violates the invariants -- and we prove that it is never approved by the
bytecode verifier.
For a discussion of how we prove theorems about M1, see my Marktoberdorf 2008
lectures on ``Mechanized Operational Semantics'' at
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/moore/publications/talks/marktoberdorf-08/index.html
There you will not only find a version of M1 very much like this one but an
explanation of the ``clock function'' method of proving code totally correct,
and an explanation of how we can also use the Floyd-Hoare inductive assertion
method to prove both partial and total correctness. [By adding or deleting
M1 instructions we make certain programs easier or harder to write; for
example, some M1 models include the instruction IFLT for testing whether the
top of stack is less than 0, while others just have IFEQ for testing whether
it is equal to 0. These minor differences are what distinguish various
versions of M1 floating around in the literature.]
See also the paper
``Proof Styles in Operational Semantics,'' with S. Ray, Formal Methods in
Computer-Aided Design (FMCAD 2004), A. J. Hu and A. K. Martin (eds.),
Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 3312, pages 67-81, 2004.
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/sandip/publications/proof-styles/main.html
and the supporting material in the Community Books on the directory
books/proofstyles/ for discussion of the comparison of clock style proofs
with inductive assertion style proofs.
The programs dealt with in this directory include the following. Unless
otherwise noted, the inputs to the programs are natural numbers. The
programs are simple but illustrative of various code proof techniques.
"template.lisp" - product of two naturals by repeated addition
"sum.lisp" - sum of the naturals below n
"sumsq.lisp" - sum of squares of the naturals below n
"fact.lisp" - factorial of n
"power.lisp" - 2^n
"expt.lisp" - n^m
"alternating-sum.lisp" - n/2 by summing alternate naturals below n
"alternating-sum-variant.lisp" - same as above but slightly different proof
"fib.lisp" - Fibonnaci n
"lessp.lisp" - 1 or 0 depending on whether n < m
"even-solution-1.lisp" - 1 or 0 depending on whether n is even
"even-solution-2.lisp" - same as above but different program
"sign.lisp" - -1, 0, or 1 depending on sign of integer i
"div.lisp" - floor of n/d for non-0 d
"bexpt.lisp" - n^m by binary method
"magic.lisp" - illustration of the importance of total
correctness: we exhibit and verify a
program that can ``compute'' any function
on the natural numbers -- sort of!
"funny-fact.lisp" - factorial again, but with a program that
violates the bytecode verifier
"wormhole-abstraction.lisp" - factorial, again, but by a different proof
method
As of this writing (ACL2 Version 6.3) there are not illustrations of
inductive assertion style proofs here. I hope to add some in the future.
I recommend studying these proofs in the order listed above. The template file
contains many comments trying to explain the basic method used. The other
files follow the template to verify similar programs and begin to introduce
other proof techniques.
To really learn how to do this I recommend reading the template and
understanding it and then just trying to tackle each of the problems described
above WITHOUT looking at my solutions. For example, instead of
reading "sum.lisp":
Define your own M1 program that takes a natural number, n, in local variable 0
and sums the naturals (weakly) below it, n+(n-1)+...+2+1, leaving the final
sum on the stack. Prove that this program passes the bytecode verifier,
halts, and leaves (n * (n + 1))/2 on the stack.
Then repeat that for the other simple programs described above.
About Section 3:
We then prove, in "theorems-a-and-b.lisp" (and supporting files) that M1 is
Turing equivalent, meaning that it can emulate a Turing Machine. The starting
point of this work is the 1984 paper by Boyer and Moore in which a Turing
machine interpreter is defined in the Pure Lisp of Nqthm.
A Mechanical Proof of the Turing Completeness of PURE LISP, with
R. S. Boyer. In W. W. Bledsoe and D. W. Loveland (eds.), Contemporary
Mathematics, Volume 29, Automated Theorem Proving: After 25 Years, American
Mathematical Society, Providence, Rhode Island, 1984, pp. 133-168.
We define that function in ACL2 as tmi. We then refine it down to a
numerically based function tmi3 and then implement tmi3 on M1 and prove the
equivalence of all these machines.
We create the emulator by first writing a verifying compiler that takes an
arbitrary system description written in a very simple Lisp-like language and:
(i) compiles it into M1 bytecode
(ii) generates clock functions that specify how long it runs on given input
(with suitable handling of non-terminating computations)
(iii) generates theorems stating that the M1 bytecode satisfies its
specification,
(iv) generates the lemmas and hints necessary to lead ACL2 to the proofs, and
(v) proves all the theorems.
By the way, the compiled code does not, in general, satisfy the good-statep
predicate. The reason it that it uses the M1 operand stack to
(i) save the return pc
(ii) pass arguments
(iii) protect the local variables of the caller
(iv) store intermediate results during expression evaluation
essentially following the standard x86 protocol for subroutine call and
return. (Of course, since M1 does not have a POPJ or RET instruction,
returning to the saved pc is actually done by a big case split and the compiler
keeps track of every location from which a subroutine is called.)
Thus, multiple arrivals at the subroutine entry code for a given subroutine
from different locations in the main program may have different stack depths.
For example, the compiled code for (+ (foo x) (foo x)) jumps to the code for
foo twice (and returns). But on the second jump there is one more item on the
stack than there was on the first jump, violating the bytecode verifier's stack
conventions.
Then we give this verifying compiler the description of tmi3 and get back an
895 instruction verified M1 program implementing tmi3. We then prove that tmi3
is equivalent (modulo mappings between representations) to the 1984 Boyer-Moore
tmi.
We conclude by proving two theorems, analogous to theorems A and B in the
Boyer-Moore paper:
Let tm be any Turing machine, tape be any input tape, and st be any state of
tm. We will define an M1 program that, when given encodings st, tape, and tm,
emulates the behavior of any given Turing machine. We prove that
(a) If there is an i such that running the M1 emulator halts after i steps,
then there exists a j such that running the Turing machine tm on the given tape
starting in st halts in j steps. The contrapositive of this is that if there
does not exist such a j, there does not exist such an i, i.e., if the Turing
machine runs forever, so does the M1 emulator.
(b) If tm on tape starting in st halts in n steps, then there exists a k such
that the emulator halts in k steps and returns (an M1 representation of) the
same final tape.
These two theorems are formally stated as follows in terms of down and up,
where down maps st, tape, and tm into an M1 state poised to run the emulator
and up projects a tape out of an M1 state. Technically, one should inspect the
definitions of down and up to ascertain that we don't ``cheat'' and do the
Turing machine computation with some kind of non-constructive mapping.
Theorem a:
(implies
(and (symbolp st)
(tapep tape)
(turing-machinep tm)
(natp i))
(let ((s_f (m1 (down st tape tm) i)))
(implies (haltedp s_f)
(tmi st tape tm (find-j st tape tm i)))))
Theorem b:
(implies (and (symbolp st)
(tapep tape)
(turing-machinep tm)
(tmi st tape tm n))
(let ((s_f (m1 (down st tape tm)
(find-k st tape tm n))))
(and (haltedp s_f)
(equal (up s_f)
(tmi st tape tm n)))))
Finally, we demonstrate the extraordinary inefficiency of the M1 emulator. We
show a simple Turing Machine, taken from Rogers' book, that doubles the number
of 1s on the initial tape, and show that to compute eight 1s from 4 1s requires
291,202,253,588,734,484,219,274,297,505,568,945,357,129,888,612,375,663,883
M1 steps. That is between 10^56 and 10^57 steps.
This illustrates that we can prove things about computational models that are
way too expensive to run and that our method of counting steps works even for
quite complex computations.
The organization of the files in this section is:
"tmi-reductions.lisp" -- prove reduction theorems from the 1984 Boyer-Moore
model of a Turing machine interpreter to an
algorithm implementable with the all-numeric
resources of M1
"defsys-utilities.lisp" -- utilities for the verifying compiler
""defsys.lisp"" -- a verifying compiler from a simple Lisp-like source
language to M1 bytecode
"low-seven.lisp" -- simple example of the use of the verifying compiler;
irrelevant to the main goal of proving Turing
equivalence of M1
"implementation.lisp" -- the Lisp-like description of a Turing machine
interpreter, compiled and verified by the verifying
compiler
"theorems-a-and-b.lisp" -- relating the tmi-reductions to the implementation
and reshaping the final theorems into forms (a)
and (b) of the 1984 Boyer-Moore paper
"find-k!.lisp" -- converting certain of the clock functions into
equivalent closed-form algebraic expressions (and
proving their equivalence) so that it is possible to
compute the time it takes to simulate a given Turing
machine computation by the M1 implementation. It was
only after this conversion that I could compute the
time taken for the example program that doubles the
number on the tape: ~ 10^56 steps.
History, Related Work, and Background
I developed M1 for the first offering, in 1997, of the course ``CS378 A Formal
Model of the Java Virtual Machine,'' in the Computer Science Department of the
University of Texas at Austin. The course taught students how to model complex
digital artifacts like microprocessors and virtual machines. Over the course
of the semester, the students modified and elaborated M1 until it became a
reasonably accurate model of a substantial part of the JVM. This process was
taken to its stunning conclusion with M6 by Hanbing Liu in his 2006 UT Austin
PhD dissertation, ``Formal Specification and Verification of a JVM and its
Bytecode Verifier.''
I found it helpful, over the years, to modify the original M1 in various ways
to make program coding, proofs, and/or subsequent elaborations easier for the
students. Thus, papers that mention ``M1'' published from time to time by me
and others do not necessarily talk about the version of M1 defined here!
However, the most common discrepancy is just in the particular choice of subset
of the instructions modeled. I think any reasonable person would look at the
various formal definitions and pronounce them all ``virtually the same.''
M1 differs from the JVM in so many ways it is pointless to try to list them.
But so that readers will not think I think M1 is a model of the JVM let me say that
(a) the instruction stream in M1 is a list of fully parsed instructions, not
bytes, (b) the only data type supported is integers, (c) integers are unbounded,
(d) the only instructions modeled are the analogues of ILOAD, ISTORE, ICONST,
IADD, ISUB, IMUL, IFEQ, and GOTO, (e) there is no heap, (f) there are no Objects,
(g) there are no methods, classes, or class tables -- just a single parsed
bytecode program, (h) there are no threads or monitors, (i) there are no
exceptions, and (j) there is no bytecode verifier or class loader. But by
enumerating these omissions you can get a sense for what the students formalized
(with my help) over the semester.
Despite these limitations, since M1 has unbounded integers it is Turing
equivalent and thus strictly more powerful than any finite computing machine.
It wasn't until March, 2012, that I bothered to prove that M1 is Turing
equivalent. In class that month the students said that M1 was hard to program
and I countered that it was Turing equivalent. But since M1 is a pedagogical
device designed to show students how to model and reason about computing
artifacts, I felt it was incumbent upon me not to merely allege that it was
Turing equivalent but to formalize and prove it.
This amounts to implementing a Turing machine interpreter in M1 bytecode and
proving it correct. I completed the first proof of M1's Turing equivalence
over Spring Break, March 10--18, 2012. I coded the interpreter by hand -- all
804 M1 instructions -- and manually wrote the specifications and lemmas
necessary to prove it correct. I was helped in this endeavor by the fact that
by 2012 I had taught the JVM course so many times that programming and
verifying M1 code was second nature. But the biggest help was that in 1984,
Bob Boyer and I had proved the Turing equivalence of Pure Lisp with Nqthm:
A Mechanical Proof of the Turing Completeness of PURE LISP, with
R. S. Boyer. In W. W. Bledsoe and D. W. Loveland (eds.), Contemporary
Mathematics, Volume 29, Automated Theorem Proving: After 25 Years, American
Mathematical Society, Providence, Rhode Island, 1984, pp. 133-168.
This paper gave me the definition, in the Nqthm logic, of an acceptable Turing
machine interpreter and the form of the two theorems I had to prove to capture
the notion that a convenient computational paradigm (in this case, M1) is as
powerful as Turing machines. The basic idea is to set up a correspondence
between Turing machines and M1 states and then to prove that (a) if a Turing
machine runs forever it corresponding M1 computation runs forever and (b) if a
Turing machine halts with a given tape, its M1 counterpart halts with the same
tape (modulo data representation). Great care must be taken to insure that the
computing machines and not the correspondence perform the necessary work.
The title of the 1984 paper used ``completeness'' where today I use
``equivalence.'' I believe that in 1984, the term ``Turing completeness'' was
an acceptable way to say what we mean by ``Turing equivalence'' today and,
today, ``Turing completeness'' means something different than we meant by in it
1984.
I also believe that the 1984 Boyer-Moore paper was the first time a computing
paradigm, in that case, Pure Lisp, was mechanically proved to be as powerful as
Turing machines. I believe this M1 proof is only the second time.
Furthermore, I believe M1 is the first von Neumann paradigm mechanically proved
Turing equivalent.
Finally, I should note that in neither the 1984 work nor the present work do we
prove that Turing machines can emulate the more convenient paradigms (Pure Lisp
or M1). Since it is commonly accepted that any computation can be done by
Turing machines, the interesting direction whether a more convenient paradigm
can emulate Turing machines.
The week after Spring Break, I gave two talks on the M1 proof. The first was
at the ACL2 research group seminar and the second was in my JVM class.
I learned a lot about the complexity of presenting the work in those two
seminars. Neither went as smoothly as I wished, in part because the work
itself was so complicated but also because it was messy and I did not know what
I wanted to emphasize. But, having given the talks I put the whole thing down.
I believe it was a few weeks later, in early April, 2012, that I decided to
implement a verifying compiler from a simple Lisp subset to M1. The compiler
could then be used to produce both the bytecode implementation and the
necessary lemmas. That version of the proof was being polished by April 14,
2012.
But I did not change the talk nor did I give the talk again.
Then in Edinburgh during the Summer of 2012, I volunteered to give the talk
again to Alan Bundy's group and then realized I needed to clean it up. I
started during the evenings of the Dagstuhl workshop on ``AI and Formal
Software Development'', July 2-6, 2012. But instead of working on the proof
script, I worked exclusively on the talk. The version of the talk I created
that week is quite similar to the pdf file provided below.
Having finished preparing a better talk, I then repeated the proof a third time
to make it reflect what I wanted to say. I gave the third talk in Bundy's
seminar in July, 2012.
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