Silicon: A Viper Verifier Based on Symbolic Execution

Silicon is a state-of-the-art, automated verifier based on symbolic execution, and the default verifier of the Viper verification infrastructure. Silicon's input language is the Viper intermediate verification language: a language in the spirit of Microsoft's Boogie, but with a higher level of abstraction and a built-in notation of permissions, which makes Viper well-suited for encoding and verifying properties of sequential and concurrent programs with shared mutable state. Loads of details can (but don't need to) be found in the PhD thesis of Malte Schwerhoff.

As an example, consider the following simple C++ program, which runs two threads in parallel that increment a shared memory location and that uses a lock to avoid race conditions:

#include <thread>
#include <mutex>
#include <assert.h>

struct Cell {
  int val;
};

void inc(Cell* c, std::mutex* guard) {
  guard->lock();
  
  int t = c->val;
  std::this_thread::sleep_for(std::chrono::seconds(1));
  c->val = t + 1;
  
  guard->unlock();
}

int main() {
  Cell* c = new Cell{0};
  std::mutex* guard = new std::mutex();
  
  std::thread t1 = std::thread(inc, c, guard);
  std::thread t2 = std::thread(inc, c, guard);

  t1.join();
  t2.join();
  
  guard->~mutex();
  assert(c->val == 2);

  return 0;
}

Such a program can be encoded in Viper, e.g. using an Owicki-Gries approach as shown below, and Silicon can be used to automatically verify that the shared memory location is indeed modified in an orderly manner.

field val: Int
field t1: Int
field t2: Int

// Monitor/lock invariant associated with the shared cell
// Macro'ed for easy reuse
define guard_INV(c)
  acc(c.val) && acc(c.t1, 1/2) && acc(c.t2, 1/2) &&
  c.val == c.t1 + c.t2

// Precondition of inc
define inc_PRE(c, tid)
  (tid == 0 || tid == 1) &&
  (tid == 0 ? acc(c.t1, 1/2) : acc(c.t2, 1/2))
  
// Postcondition of inc
define inc_POST(c, tid, oldv)
  tid == 0 ? (acc(c.t1, 1/2) && c.t1 == oldv + 1)
            : (acc(c.t2, 1/2) && c.t2 == oldv + 1)

method inc(c: Ref, tid: Int)
  requires inc_PRE(c, tid)
  ensures  inc_POST(c, tid, tid == 0 ? old(c.t1) : old(c.t2))
{
  inhale guard_INV(c) // models guard.lock()
  
  c.val := c.val + 1
  
  if (tid == 0) { c.t1 := c.t1 + 1 }
  else { c.t2 := c.t2 + 1 }
  
  exhale guard_INV(c) // models guard.unlock()
}

method main() {
  var c: Ref
  c := new(val, t1, t2) // allocate real and ghost memory
  c.val := 0
  c.t1 := 0
  c.t2 := 0
  
  exhale guard_INV(c) // share the cell, i.e. create the guarding mutex
  
  label pre_fork
  exhale inc_PRE(c, 0) // fork thread 1
  exhale inc_PRE(c, 1) // fork thread 2
  
  inhale inc_POST(c, 0, old[pre_fork](c.t1)) // join thread 1
  inhale inc_POST(c, 1, old[pre_fork](c.t2)) // join thread 2
  
  inhale guard_INV(c) // unshare the cell, i.e. destroy the mutex
  
  assert c.val == 2;
}

Getting Started

• Download the Viper IDE (based on Microsoft Visual Studio Code).

• Experiment with Viper using the Viper online web interface.

Build Instructions

See the documentation wiki for instructions on how to try out or install the Viper tools.

• You need recent installations of
  1. the sbt build tool
  2. the Z3 SMT solver
  3. the cvc5 SMT solver
• Clone this repository recursively by running:
  git clone --recursive https://github.com/viperproject/silicon

And then, from the cloned directory, with the Z3_EXE environment variable set appropriately;

• Compile and run with:
  sbt "run [options] <path to Viper file>"
  Or run all tests via sbt test
• Alternatively, for a faster startup without compilation each time, build a .jar file:
  sbt assembly
  And then run with:
  java -jar ./target/scala-*/silicon.jar [options] <path to Viper file>

We recommend IDEA IntelliJ for Scala development, but any IDE that supports sbt will do