David Neto
Research Subjects
Research Interests
David Neto has a total of 5 co-authors. Here are the top co-authors by number of shared publications:
- Alan Baker
Google, Canada
1 shared publication - Alastair F. Donaldson
Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom
1 shared publication - Jack Clark
Department of Computing, Imperial College London
1 shared publication - John Wickerson
Imperial College London
1 shared publication - Vasileios Klimis
Queen Mary University of London, London, United Kingdom
1 shared publication
Latest Publications
- Open Access
- 9 January 2023
- Published by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages
- Vol. 7 (POPL) , 1740-1769
Taking Back Control in an Intermediate Representation for GPU Computing
We describe our experiences successfully applying lightweight formal methods to substantially improve and reformulate an important part of Standard Portable Intermediate Representation SPIRV, an industry-standard language for GPU computing. The formal model that we present has allowed us to (1) identify several ambiguities and needless complexities in the way that structured control flow was defined in the SPIRV specification; (2) interact with the authors of the SPIRV specification to rectify these problems; (3) validate the developer tools and conformance test suites that support the SPIRV language by cross-checking them against our formal model, improving the tools, test suites, and our models in the process; and (4) develop a novel method for fuzzing SPIRV compilers to detect miscompilation bugs that leverages our formal model. The latest release of the SPIRV specification incorporates the revised set of control-flow definitions that have arisen from our work. Furthermore, our novel compiler-fuzzing technique has led to the discovery of twenty distinct, previously unknown bugs in SPIRV compilers from Google, the Khronos Group, Intel, and Mozilla. Our work showcases the practical impact that formal modelling and analysis techniques can have on the design and implementation of industry-standard programming languages.
- 9 January 2023
- Published by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages
- Vol. 7 (POPL) , 1740-1769
Open AccessTaking Back Control in an Intermediate Representation for GPU Computing
We describe our experiences successfully applying lightweight formal methods to substantially improve and reformulate an important part of Standard Portable Intermediate Representation SPIRV, an industry-standard language for GPU computing. The formal model that we present has allowed us to (1) identify several ambiguities and needless complexities in the way that structured control flow was defined in the SPIRV specification; (2) interact with the authors of the SPIRV specification to rectify these problems; (3) validate the developer tools and conformance test suites that support the SPIRV language by cross-checking them against our formal model, improving the tools, test suites, and our models in the process; and (4) develop a novel method for fuzzing SPIRV compilers to detect miscompilation bugs that leverages our formal model. The latest release of the SPIRV specification incorporates the revised set of control-flow definitions that have arisen from our work. Furthermore, our novel compiler-fuzzing technique has led to the discovery of twenty distinct, previously unknown bugs in SPIRV compilers from Google, the Khronos Group, Intel, and Mozilla. Our work showcases the practical impact that formal modelling and analysis techniques can have on the design and implementation of industry-standard programming languages.