Tank Rey

The [lambda]-calculus provides a simple, well-established framework for research in functional programming languages that readily lends itself to the use offormal methods--that is, the use of mathematically sound techniques and supporting tools--to describe and verify properties of programming languages, as well. This is no coincidence. After all, the [lambda]-calculus formalizes the concept of effective computability, for all computable functions are definable in the untyped [lambda]-calculus, making it expressively equivalent torecursive functions. In software, the expressiveness of functional languages is considereda strength. Functional approaches to language design, however, needn't be limited to soft-ware. In hardware, the expressiveness of functional languages becomes a major obstacle to successful hardware synthesis, for the reason that such languages are usually capable of expressing general recursion. The presence of general recursion makes it possible to generate expr...

Constructing high assurance, secure hardware remains a challenge, because to do so relies on both a verifiable means of hardware description and implementation. However, production hardware description languages (HDL) lack the formal underpinnings required by formal methods in security. Still, there is no such thing as high assurance systems without high assurance hardware. We present a core calculus of secure hardware description with its formal semantics, security type system and mechanization in Coq. This calculus is the core of the functional HDL, ReWire, shown in previous work to have useful applications in reconfigurable computing. This work supports a full-fledged, formal methodology for producing high assurance hardware.