SHF: Small: Formal Methods for Modern System Configuration Languages

SHF：小：现代系统配置语言的形式化方法

• 批准号: 1717636
• 负责人: Brian Levine
• 金额: $ 44.89万
• 依托单位: University of Massachusetts Amherst
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-08-01 至 2021-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1717636&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SHF; Small; Formal; Methods; Modern

Computer systems play an essential role in all aspects of business, education, and the military. However, modern computer systems are incredibly complicated and thus prone to failure and susceptible to being hacked. System administrators, whose job it is to ensure that computer systems run smoothly, have a very difficult time managing and defending computing infrastructure. This research project is developing tools and techniques to make the job of system administrators dramatically easier. The project is focused on techniques that work well with existing, industry-standard tools and practices, which will make its research contributions easier to apply. The intellectual merits are that the project is (1) developing new tools for maintaining computer systems, (2) designing models of computer systems that are amenable to analysis and verification, and (3) advancing the state of the art in formal methods for system administration tools. The project's broader significance and importance are that (1) it directly addresses a current and urgent problem that affects the nation's computing infrastructure, (2) it is developing tools that system administrators will be able to use, and (3) it will spur further research and development in this important area by publishing and releasing its products as open source software.This project leverages recent advances in program verification and program synthesis to make system administration dramatically easier. Instead of proposing completely new abstractions that would be unfamiliar to system administrators, the project is developing techniques that are applicable to mainstream system configuration languages, such as Puppet, Chef, and Ansible. The project is developing tools to verify both universal properties of configurations and configuration-specific properties that govern how components of complex systems interact. Moreover, since real system configurations often invoke external commands, the project is also investigating a model-learning approach to accommodate them. Finally, even verified configurations need to be updated, and updates introduce new errors. To address this problem, the project is developing new abstractions to make configuration updates dramatically easier.

计算机系统在商业、教育和军事的各个方面发挥着重要作用。然而，现代计算机系统非常复杂，因此容易出现故障并且容易被黑客攻击。系统管理员的工作是确保计算机系统平稳运行，但管理和保护计算基础设施却非常困难。 该研究项目正在开发工具和技术，使系统管理员的工作变得更加轻松。该项目专注于与现有的行业标准工具和实践良好配合的技术，这将使其研究贡献更容易应用。该项目的智力优点是（1）开发用于维护计算机系统的新工具，（2）设计易于分析和验证的计算机系统模型，以及（3）推进系统形式化方法的最新技术管理工具。该项目更广泛的意义和重要性在于（1）它直接解决了影响国家计算基础设施的当前紧迫问题，（2）它正在开发系统管理员能够使用的工具，以及（3）它将进一步推动通过以开源软件的形式发布和发布其产品，在这一重要领域进行研究和开发。该项目利用程序验证和程序综合方面的最新进展，使系统管理变得更加容易。该项目没有提出系统管理员不熟悉的全新抽象，而是开发适用于主流系统配置语言（例如 Puppet、Chef 和 A​​nsible）的技术。该项目正在开发工具来验证配置的通用属性和控制复杂系统组件如何交互的特定配置属性。此外，由于真实的系统配置经常调用外部命令，该项目还在研究一种模型学习方法来适应它们。 最后，即使经过验证的配置也需要更新，而更新会引入新的错误。为了解决这个问题，该项目正在开发新的抽象，以使配置更新变得更加容易。

项目成果

Making High-Performance Robots Safe and Easy to Use for an Introduction to Computing

使高性能机器人安全且易于使用，介绍计算

• 发表时间: 2020-02
• 期刊: Educational Advances in Artificial Intelligence (EAAI
• 作者: Spitzer, Joseph;Biswas, Joydeep;Guha, Arjun
• 通讯作者: Guha, Arjun

Model-Based Warp Overlapped Tiling for Image Processing Programs on GPUs

GPU 上图像处理程序的基于模型的扭曲重叠平铺

• DOI: 10.1145/3410463.3414649
• 发表时间: 2020-09
• 期刊: International Conference on Parallel Architectures and Compilation Techniques
• 作者: Jangda, Abhinav;Guha, Arjun
• 通讯作者: Guha, Arjun