A Formal Correctness Proof for an EDF Scheduler Implementation

• Published in: Proceedings / IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium pp. 281 - 292
• Main Authors: Vanhems, Florian, Rusu, Vlad, Nowak, David, Grimaud, Gilles
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.05.2022
• Subjects: Codes; coq; correction; EDF; formal; implementation; job; monad; proof; real-time; Real-time systems; refinement; scheduler; shallow embedding; Software; TCB; verification; Voting
• ISSN: 2642-7346
• DOI: 10.1109/RTAS54340.2022.00030

The scheduler is a critical piece of software in real-time systems. A failure in the scheduler can have serious consequences; therefore, it is important to provide strong correctness guarantees for it. In this paper we propose a formal proof methodology that we apply to an Earliest Deadline First (EDF) scheduler. It consists first in proving the correctness of the election function algorithm and then lifting this proof up to the implementation through refinements. The proofs are formalized in the Coq proof assistant, ensuring that they are free of human errors and that all cases are considered. Our methodology is general enough to be applied to other schedulers or other types of system code. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that an implementation of EDF applicable to arbitrary sequences of jobs has been proven correct.