Verifying Absence of Hardware-Software Data Races using Counting Abstraction

Abstract

Device drivers are critical components of operating systems. However, due to their interactions with the hardware and being embedded in complex programming models implemented by the operating system, ensuring reliability of device drivers remains to be a challenge. In this paper, we focus on the interaction of the driver with the device and present an approach for modeling this interaction and verifying absence of hardware-software data races. Specifically, we use the counting abstraction technique to abstract dynamic process creation in response to I/O acknowledgements sent by the device. We present the results of our approach on the modeling and verification of several Linux device driver models.