Computer Science | Grinnell College

On Thursday, April 30, Brooks Davis (Senior Software Engineer, SRI International) will describe a proposed processor architecture to support memory-safe programming:

The C programming language (combined with C++) is used to implement all important modern operating systems and the runtimes of most higher level programming languages. Despite the ease of implementing serious security bugs in C, billions of lines of software is written in it and our daily lives depend on much of that software. It is surprising that all popular CPU architectures provide memory safety mechanisms substantially identical to those on the PDP-11 on which C was written in 1972! Our research aims to change that.

In this talk I provide an introduction to the conventional memory model of C and cover some of the problems this model causes. I will then discuss our solution, the CHERI CPU and our modified C compiler and how we took it from an early prototype to something that can bring memory safety to virtually all C code without code changes.

At 4:15 p.m., refreshments will be served in the Computer Science Commons. The talk, “Beyond the PDP-11: Architectural support for a memory-safe C abstract machine,” will begin at 4:30 p.m. in Noyce 3821. Everyone is welcome to attend!