Determining Memory Footprints Sample Clauses

Determining Memory Footprints. The memory footprint of a piece of code is the part of computer memory accessed by that code while performing its operations. The notion of footprint is central in local reasoning. Separation logic provides mechanisms whereby a specification can concentrate on only the cells accessed by a program, while allowing the specification to be used in wider contexts via a special rule called the frame rule (see also Chapter 6). In the context of automatic verification and program analysis this suggests, when considering a code fragment in isolation, to try to discover assertions that describe the footprint, rather than the entire global state of the system. This is the key idea that makes analysis based on separation logic viable: the entire global state can be enormous, or even unknown, where one can use much smaller assertions to talk about the footprint. There are two main articles in the literature which automatically determine memory foot- prints.