Kit: a study in operating system verification

The author reviews Kit, a small multitasking operating system kernel written in the machine language of a uniprocessor von Neumann computer. The kernel is proved to implement on this shared computer a fixed number of conceptually distributed communicating processes. In addition to implementing processes, the kernel provides the following verified services: process scheduling, error handling, message passing, and an interface to asynchronous devices. As a by-product of the correctness proof, security-related results such as the protection of the kernel from tasks and the inability of tasks to enter supervisor mode are proved. The problem is stated in the Boyer-Moore logic, and the proof is mechanically checked with the Boyer-Moore theorem prover