Evaluating value-graph translation validation for LLVM

Translation validators are static analyzers that attempt to verify that program transformations preserve semantics. Normalizing translation validators do so by trying to match the value-graphs of an original function and its transformed counterpart. In this paper, we present the design of such a validator for LLVM’s intra-procedural optimizations, a design that does not require any instrumentation of the optimizer, nor any rewriting of the source code to compile, and needs to run only once to validate a pipeline of optimizations. We present the results of our preliminary experiments on a set of benchmarks that include GCC, a perl interpreter, SQLite3, and other C programs. Categories and Subject Descriptors F.3.2 [Logics and Meanings of Programs]: Semantics of Programming Languages - Algebraic approaches to semantics; F.3.1 [Logics and Meanings of Programs]: Specifying and Verifying and Reasoning about Programs - Mechanical Verification; F.3.3 [Logics and Meanings of Programs]: Stu...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: PLDI
• Authors: Jean-Baptiste Tristan, Paul Govereau, Greg Morrisett
• Keywords: PLDI 2011, Programming Languages, Recursion Schemes, Translation Validation, Value Graphs