Hard, machine-supported formal verification of software is at a turning point. Recent years have seen theorem proving tools maturing with a number of successful, real-life applications. At the same time, small high-performance OS kernels, which can drastically reduce the size of the trusted computing base, have become more popular. We argue that the combination of those two trends makes it feasible, and desirable, to formally verify production-quality operating systems -- now.

@inproceedings{TuchKN-05,
  author =    {Harvey Tuch and Gerwin Klein and Gernot Heiser},
  title =     {OS Verification --- Now!},
  booktitle = {Proc.\ 10th Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems (HotOS X)},
  year =      {2005},
  editor =    {Margo Seltzer},
  note =      {to appear},
}