PulseCore is a new program logic suitable for intrinsic proofs of higher-order, stateful, concurrent, dependently typed programs. It provides many of the features of a modern, concurrent separation logic, including dynamically allocated impredicative invariants, higher-order ghost state, step-indexing with later credits, and support for user-defined ghost state constructions. PulseCore is developed foundationally within the F* programming language with fully mechanized proofs, and is applicable to F* programs itself.<\/p>\n
To evaluate our work, we use Pulse, a surface language within F* for PulseCore, to develop a range of program proofs. Illustrating its suitability for proving higher-order concurrent programs, we present a verified library for task pools in the style of OCaml5, together with some verified task-parallel programs. Next, we present various data structures and synchronization primitives, including a barrier that requires the use of higher-order ghost state. Finally, we present a verified implementation of the DICE Protection Environment, an industry standard secure boot protocol. Taken together, our evaluation consists of more than 31,000 lines of verified code in a range of settings, providing evidence that PulseCore is both highly expressive as well as practical for a variety of program proof applications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PulseCore is a new program logic suitable for intrinsic proofs of higher-order, stateful, concurrent, dependently typed programs. It provides many of the features of a modern, concurrent separation logic, including dynamically allocated impredicative invariants, higher-order ghost state, step-indexing with later credits, and support for user-defined ghost state constructions. PulseCore is developed foundationally within the F* […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","msr-author-ordering":null,"msr_publishername":"","msr_publisher_other":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_edition":"","msr_editors":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_issue":"","msr_journal":"","msr_number":"","msr_organization":"ACM","msr_pages_string":"","msr_page_range_start":"","msr_page_range_end":"","msr_series":"","msr_volume":"","msr_copyright":"","msr_conference_name":"","msr_doi":"","msr_arxiv_id":"","msr_s2_paper_id":"","msr_mag_id":"","msr_pubmed_id":"","msr_other_authors":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_award":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_institution":"","msr_host":"","msr_version":"","msr_duration":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_s2_match_type":"","msr_citation_count_updated":"","msr_published_date":"2025-6-1","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_notes":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_conference_url":"https:\/\/pldi25.sigplan.org\/","msr_journal_url":"","msr_s2_pdf_url":"","msr_year":0,"msr_citation_count":0,"msr_influential_citations":0,"msr_reference_count":0,"msr_s2_match_confidence":0,"msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":true,"msr_s2_open_access":false,"msr_s2_author_ids":[],"msr_pub_ids":[],"msr_hide_image_in_river":null,"footnotes":""},"msr-research-highlight":[],"research-area":[13560],"msr-publication-type":[193716],"msr-publisher":[],"msr-focus-area":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[269148,269142],"msr-field-of-study":[253144,249202],"msr-conference":[260122],"msr-journal":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-1141099","msr-research-item","type-msr-research-item","status-publish","hentry","msr-research-area-programming-languages-software-engineering","msr-locale-en_us","msr-post-option-approved-for-river","msr-post-option-include-in-river","msr-field-of-study-formal-verification","msr-field-of-study-programming-language"],"msr_publishername":"","msr_edition":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_published_date":"2025-6-1","msr_host":"","msr_duration":"","msr_version":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_journal":"","msr_volume":"","msr_number":"","msr_editors":"","msr_series":"","msr_issue":"","msr_organization":"ACM","msr_how_published":"","msr_notes":"","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":1,"msr_main_download":"","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_doi":"","msr_publication_uploader":[{"type":"doi","viewUrl":"false","id":"false","title":"10.1145\/3729311","label_id":"243109","label":0},{"type":"url","viewUrl":"false","id":"false","title":"https:\/\/fstar-lang.org\/papers\/pulsecore-indirection-2025.pdf","label_id":"243103","label":0}],"msr_related_uploader":"","msr_citation_count":0,"msr_citation_count_updated":"","msr_s2_paper_id":"","msr_influential_citations":0,"msr_reference_count":0,"msr_arxiv_id":"","msr_s2_author_ids":[],"msr_s2_open_access":false,"msr_s2_pdf_url":null,"msr_attachments":[],"msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Gabriel Ebner","user_id":42573,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Gabriel Ebner"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Guido Mart\u00ednez","user_id":42915,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Guido Mart\u00ednez"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Aseem Rastogi","user_id":36021,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Aseem Rastogi"},{"type":"text","value":"Thibault Dardinier","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Megan Frisella","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Tahina Ramananandro","user_id":36293,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Tahina Ramananandro"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Nikhil Swamy","user_id":33138,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Nikhil Swamy"}],"msr_impact_theme":[],"msr_research_lab":[199562,199565],"msr_event":[1139118],"msr_group":[144812],"msr_project":[170698],"publication":[],"video":[],"msr-tool":[],"msr_publication_type":"inproceedings","related_content":{"projects":[{"ID":170698,"post_title":"The F* Project","post_name":"the-f-project","post_type":"msr-project","post_date":"2011-03-25 11:37:47","post_modified":"2019-08-19 15:17:27","post_status":"publish","permalink":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/the-f-project\/","post_excerpt":"F* is a verification-oriented dialect of ML. For more information, please visit https:\/\/fstar-lang.org or click on the logo below.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-project\/170698"}]}}]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/1141099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/msr-research-item"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/1141099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1141102,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/1141099\/revisions\/1141102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1141099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"msr-research-highlight","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-highlight?post=1141099"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=1141099"},{"taxonomy":"msr-publication-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-publication-type?post=1141099"},{"taxonomy":"msr-publisher","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-publisher?post=1141099"},{"taxonomy":"msr-focus-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-focus-area?post=1141099"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=1141099"},{"taxonomy":"msr-post-option","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-post-option?post=1141099"},{"taxonomy":"msr-field-of-study","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-field-of-study?post=1141099"},{"taxonomy":"msr-conference","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-conference?post=1141099"},{"taxonomy":"msr-journal","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-journal?post=1141099"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=1141099"},{"taxonomy":"msr-pillar","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-pillar?post=1141099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}