EMME: a formal tool for ECMAScript Memory Model Evaluation

January 30, 2018 · The Ethereal · 🏛 International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for Construction and Analysis of Systems

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Authors Cristian Mattarei, Clark Barrett, Shu-yu Guo, Bradley Nelson, Ben Smith, JF Bastien arXiv ID 1801.10140 Category cs.LO: Logic in CS Cross-listed cs.PL Citations 5 Venue International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for Construction and Analysis of Systems Last Checked 5 months ago

Abstract

Nearly all web-based interfaces are written in JavaScript. Given its prevalence, the support for high performance JavaScript code is crucial. The ECMA Technical Committee 39 (TC39) has recently extended the ECMAScript language (i.e., JavaScript) to support shared memory accesses between different threads. The extension is given in terms of a natural language memory model specification. In this paper we describe a formal approach for validating both the memory model and its implementations in various JavaScript engines. We first introduce a formal version of the memory model and report results on checking the model for consistency and other properties. We then introduce our tool, EMME, built on top of the Alloy analyzer, which leverages the model to generate all possible valid executions of a given JavaScript program. Finally, we report results using EMME together with small test programs to analyze industrial JavaScript engines. We show that EMME can find bugs as well as missed opportunities for optimization.