Common Contracts
1 similar Architectural Contracts contracts
∗Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UKArchitectural Contracts • September 21st, 2023
Abstract—We propose architectural contracts that specify the allowable limits of speculative execution to enable both software safety guarantees and hardware verification. Transient-execution attacks have presented a major threat in recent years, driving deployment of software mitigations and research into hardware solutions. Recent work on hardware/software contracts for se- cure speculation recognizes the need for cooperation between hardware guarantees and software analysis, and demonstrates that speculative execution models can enable formal analysis of programs with respect to transient-execution vulnerabilities. Therefore, we have extended these limited models into com- prehensive architecture-level contracts that can be verified at a microarchitecture level. We define a set of speculation contracts for translation (TSC) and branching (BSC), and for memory ordering (MOSC). We also develop a set of directed-random test routines that reproduce all known contract violations in a pro
