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btiffin

Tue Jun 24, 2014 4:39 pm


Read about this on news.ycombinator.com

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seL4, supposedly a proven bug-free microkernel.  About to go open.

http://sel4.systems/About/

(The home page had 34 days left on the countdown to release timer when I looked)


    Completely unique about seL4 is its unprecedented degree of assurance, achieved through formal verification.
    Specifically, the ARM version of seL4 is the first (and still only) general-purpose OS kernel with a full functional
    correctness proof, meaning a mathematical proof that the implementation (written in C) adheres to its specification.
    In short, the implementation is proved to be bug-free. This implies a number of other properties, such as freedom
    from buffer overflows, null pointer exceptions, use-after-free, etc. 


I'm old now, but I find this hard to believe, also lazy enough to have not read the formal theory or proof papers.

Cheers