Solver-Aided Programming for All

Solver-aided tools have automated the verification and synthesis of practical programs in many domains, from high-performance computing to executable biology. These tools work by reducing verification and synthesis tasks to satisfiability queries, which involves compiling programs to logical constraints. Developing an effective symbolic compiler is challenging, however, and until recently, it took years of expert work to create a solver-aided tool for a new domain. In this talk, I will present Rosette, a programming language for rapid creation of solver-aided tools. To build a new tool, you write an interpreter for the tool's input language, and Rosette lifts this interpreter into a symbolic compiler. This is made possible by Rosette's symbolic virtual machine, which can translate both a language implementation and programs in that language to efficient constraints. Since its first public release in 2014, Rosette has enabled a wide range of programmers, from professional developers to high school students, to create over 30 new verification and synthesis tools. Example applications include verifying radiation therapy software in current clinical use, synthesizing GPU kernels, and verifying and synthesizing just-in-time compilers that are part of the Linux operating system. This talk will provide a brief introduction to Rosette and describe a few recent applications.

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