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A Knownbits Abstract Domain for the Toy Optimizer, Correctly

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After Max' introduction to abstract interpretation for the toy optimizer in the last post, I want to present a more complicated abstract domain in this post. This abstract domain reasons about the individual bits of a variable in a trace. Every bit can be either "known zero", "known one" or "unknown". The abstract domain is useful for optimizing integer operations, particularly the bitwise operations. The abstract domain follows quite closely the tristate abstract domain of the eBPF verifier in the Linux Kernel, as described by the paper Sound, Precise, and Fast Abstract Interpretation with Tristate Numbers by Harishankar Vishwanathan, Matan Shachnai, Srinivas Narayana, and Santosh Nagarakatte.

The presentation in this post will still be in the context of the toy optimizer. We'll spend a significant part of the post convincing ourselves that the abstract domain transfer functions that we're writing are really correct, using both property-based testing and automated proofs (again using Z3).

PyPy has implemented and merged a more complicated version of the same abstract domain for the "real" PyPy JIT. A more thorough explanation of that real world implementation will follow.

I'd like to thank Max Bernstein and Armin Rigo for lots of great feedback on drafts of this post. The PyPy implementation was mainly done by Nico Rittinghaus and me.

Contents:

Motivation

In many programs that do bit-manipulation of integers, some of the bits of the integer variables of the program can be statically known. Here's a simple example:

x = a | 1
...
if x & 1:
    ...
else:
    ...

After the assignment x = a | 1, we know that the lowest bit of x must be 1 (the other bits are unknown) and an optimizer could remove the condition x & 1 by constant-folding it to 1.

Another (more complicated) example is:

assert i & 0b111 == 0 # check that i is a multiple of 8
j = i + 16
assert j & 0b111 == 0

This kind of code could e.g. happen in a CPU emulator, where i and j are integers that represent emulated pointers, and the asserts are alignment checks. The first assert implies that the lowest three bits of i must be 0. Adding 16 to such a number produces a result where the lowest three bits are again all 0, therefore the second assert is always true. So we would like a compiler to remove the second assert.

Both of these will optimizations are doable with the help of the knownbits abstract domain that we'll discuss in the rest of the post.

The Knownbits Abstract Domain

An abstract value of the knownbits domain needs to be able to store, for every bit of an integer variable in a program, whether it is known 0, known 1, or unknown. To represent three different states, we need 2 bits, which we will call one and unknown. Here's the encoding:

one unknown knownbit
0 0 0
1 0 1
0 1 ?
1 1 illegal

The unknown bit is set if we don't know the value of the bit ("?"), the one bit is set if the bit is known to be a 1. Since two bits are enough to encode four different states, but we only need three, the combination of a set one bit and a set unknown is not allowed.

We don't just want to encode a single bit, however. Instead, we want to do this for all the bits of an integer variable. Therefore the instances of the abstract domain get two integer fields ones and unknowns, where each pair of corresponding bits encodes the knowledge about the corresponding bit of the integer variable in the program.

We can start implementing a Python class that works like this:

from dataclasses import dataclass

@dataclass(eq=False)
class KnownBits:
    ones : int
    unknowns : int

    def __post_init__(self):
        if isinstance(self.ones, int):
            assert self.is_well_formed()

    def is_well_formed(self):
        # a bit cannot be both 1 and unknown
        return self.ones & self.unknowns == 0

    @staticmethod
    def from_constant(const : int):
        """ Construct a KnownBits corresponding to a constant, where all bits
        are known."""
        return KnownBits(const, 0)

    def is_constant(self):
        """ Check if the KnownBits instance represents a constant. """
        # it's a constant if there are no unknowns
        return self.unknowns == 0

We can also add some convenience properties. Sometimes it is easier to work with an integer where all the known bits are set, or one where the positions of all the known zeros have a set bit:

class KnownBits:
    ...

    @property
    def knowns(self):
        """ return an integer where the known bits are set. """
        # the knowns are just the unknowns, inverted
        return ~self.unknowns

    @property
    def zeros(self):
        """ return an integer where the places that are known zeros have a bit
        set. """
        # it's a 0 if it is known, but not 1
        return self.knowns & ~self.ones

Also, for debugging and for writing tests we want a way to print the known bits in a human-readable form, and also to have a way to construct a KnownBits instance from a string. It's not important to understand the details of __str__ or from_str for the rest of the post, so I'm putting them into a fold:

KnownBits from and to string conversions
class KnownBits:
    ...

    def __repr__(self):
        if self.is_constant():
            return f"KnownBits.from_constant({self.ones})"
        return f"KnownBits({self.ones}, {self.unknowns})"

    def __str__(self):
        res = []
        ones, unknowns = self.ones, self.unknowns
        # construct the string representation right to left
        while 1:
            if not ones and not unknowns:
                break # we leave off the leading known 0s
            if ones == -1 and not unknowns:
                # -1 has all bits set in two's complement, so the leading
                # bits are all 1
                res.append('1')
                res.append("...")
                break
            if unknowns == -1:
                # -1 has all bits set in two's complement, so the leading bits
                # are all ?
                assert not ones
                res.append("?")
                res.append("...")
                break
            if unknowns & 1:
                res.append('?')
            elif ones & 1:
                res.append('1')
            else:
                res.append('0')
            ones >>= 1
            unknowns >>= 1
        if not res:
            res.append('0')
        res.reverse()
        return "".join(res)

    @staticmethod
    def from_str(s):
        """ Construct a KnownBits instance that from a string. String can start
        with ...1 to mean that all higher bits are 1, or ...? to mean that all
        higher bits are unknown. Otherwise it is assumed that the higher bits
        are all 0. """
        ones, unknowns = 0, 0
        startindex = 0
        if s.startswith("...?"):
            unknowns = -1
            startindex = 4
        elif s.startswith("...1"):
            ones = -1
            startindex = 4
        for index in range(startindex, len(s)):
            ones <<= 1
            unknowns <<= 1
            c = s[index]
            if c == '1':
                ones |= 1
            elif c == '?':
                unknowns |= 1
        return KnownBits(ones, unknowns)

    @staticmethod
    def all_unknown():
        """ convenience constructor for the "all bits unknown" abstract value
        """
        return KnownBits.from_str("...?")

And here's a pytest-style unit test for str:

def test_str():
    assert str(KnownBits.from_constant(0)) == '0'
    assert str(KnownBits.from_constant(5)) == '101'
    assert str(KnownBits(5, 0b10)) == '1?1'
    assert str(KnownBits(~0b1111, 0b10)) == '...100?0'
    assert str(KnownBits(1, ~0b1)) == '...?1'

An instance of KnownBits represents a set of integers, namely those that match the known bits stored in the instance. We can write a method contains that takes a concrete int value and returns True if the value matches the pattern of the known bits:

class KnownBits:
    ...

    def contains(self, value : int):
        """ Check whether the KnownBits instance contains the concrete integer
        `value`. """
        # check whether value matches the bit pattern. in the places where we
        # know the bits, the value must agree with ones.
        return value & self.knowns == self.ones

and a test:

def test_contains():
    k1 = KnownBits.from_str('1?1')
    assert k1.contains(0b111)
    assert k1.contains(0b101)
    assert not k1.contains(0b110)
    assert not k1.contains(0b011)

    k2 = KnownBits.from_str('...?1') # all odd numbers
    for i in range(-101, 100):
        assert k2.contains(i) == (i & 1)

Transfer Functions

Now that we have implemented the basics of the KnownBits class, we need to start implementing the transfer functions. They are for computing what we know about the results of an operation, given the knowledge we have about the bits of the arguments.

We'll start with a simple unary operation, invert(x) (which is ~x in Python and C syntax), which flips all the bits of at integer. If we know some bits of the arguments, we can compute the corresponding bits of the result. The unknown bits remain unknown.

Here's the code:

class KnownBits:
    ...

    def abstract_invert(self):
        # self.zeros has bits set where the known 0s are in self
        return KnownBits(self.zeros, self.unknowns)

And a unit-test:

def test_invert():
    k1 = KnownBits.from_str('01?01?01?')
    k2 = k1.abstract_invert()
    assert str(k2) == '...10?10?10?'

    k1 = KnownBits.from_str('...?')
    k2 = k1.abstract_invert()
    assert str(k2) == '...?'

Before we continue with further transfer functions, we'll think about correctness of the transfer functions and build up some test infrastructure. To test transfer functions, it's quite important to move being simple example-style unit tests. The state-space for more complicated binary transfer functions is extremely large and it's too easy to do something wrong in a corner case. Therefore we'll look at property-based-test for KnownBits next.

Property-based Tests with Hypothesis

We want to do property-based tests of KnownBits, to try make it less likely that we'll get a corner-case in the implementation wrong. We'll use Hypothesis for that.

I can't give a decent introduction to Hypothesis here, but want to give a few hints about the API. Hypothesis is a way to run unit tests with randomly generated input. It provides strategies to describe the data that the test functions expects. Hypothesis provides primitive strategies (for things like integers, strings, floats, etc) and ways to build composite strategies out of the primitive ones.

To be able to write the tests, we need to generate random KnownBits instances, and we also want an int instance that is a member of the KnownBits instance. We generate tuples of (KnownBits, int) together, to ensure this property. We'll ask Hypothesis to generate us a random concrete int as the concrete value, and then we'll also generate a second random int to use as the unknown masks (i.e. which bits of the concrete int we don't know in the KnownBits instance). Here's a function that takes two such ints and builds the tuple:

def build_knownbits_and_contained_number(concrete_value : int, unknowns : int):
    # to construct a valid KnownBits instance, we need to mask off the unknown
    # bits
    ones = concrete_value & ~unknowns
    return KnownBits(ones, unknowns), concrete_value

We can turn this function into a hypothesis strategy to generate input data using the strategies.builds function:

from hypothesis import strategies, given, settings

ints = strategies.integers()

random_knownbits_and_contained_number = strategies.builds(
    build_knownbits_and_contained_number,
    ints, ints
)

One important special case of KnownBits are the constants, which contain only a single concrete value. We'll also generate some of those specifically, and then combine the random_knownbits_and_contained_number strategy with it:

constant_knownbits = strategies.builds(
    lambda value: (KnownBits.from_constant(value), value),
    ints
)

knownbits_and_contained_number = constant_knownbits | random_knownbits_and_contained_number

Now we can write the first property-based tests, for the KnownBits.contains method:

@given(knownbits_and_contained_number)
def test_contains(t):
    k, n = t
    assert k.contains(t)

The @given decorator is used to tell Hypothesis which strategy to use to generate random data for the test function. Hypothesis will run the test with a number of random examples (100 by default). If it finds an error, it will try to minimize the example needed that demonstrates the problem, to try to make it easier to understand what is going wrong. It also saves all failing cases into an example database and tries them again on subsequent runs.

This test is as much a check for whether we got the strategies right as it is for the logic in KnownBits.contains. Here's an example output of random concrete and abstract values that we are getting here:

110000011001101 ...?0???1
...1011011 ...1011011
...1001101110101000010010011111011 ...1001101110101000010010011111011
...1001101110101000010010011111011 ...100110111010100001?010?1??1??11
1000001101111101001011010011111101000011000111011001011111101 1000001101111101001011010011111101000011000111011001011111101
1000001101111101001011010011111101000011000111011001011111101 1000001101111101001011010011111101000011000111????01?11?????1
1111100000010 1111100000010
1111100000010 ...?11111?00000??
110110 110110
110110 ...?00?00????11??10
110110 ??0??0
...100010111011111 ...?100?10111??111?
...1000100000110001 ...?000?00000??000?
110000001110 ...?0?0??000?00?0?0000000?00???0000?????00???000?0?00?01?000?0??1??
110000001110 ??000000???0
1011011010000001110101001111000010001001011101010010010001000000010101010010001101110101111111010101010010101100110000011110000 1011011010000001110101001111000010001001011101010010010001000000010101010010001101110101111111010101010010101100110000011110000
...1011010010010100 ...1011010010010100
...1011111110110011 ...1011111110110011
101000011110110 101000011?10?1?
100101 ?00?0?

That looks suitably random, but we might want to bias our random numbers a little bit towards common error values like small constants, powers of two, etc. Like this:

INTEGER_WIDTH = 64
# some small integers
ints_special = set(range(100))
# powers of two
ints_special = ints_special.union(1 << i for i in range(INTEGER_WIDTH - 2))
# powers of two - 1
ints_special = ints_special.union((1 << i) - 1 for i in range(INTEGER_WIDTH - 2))
# negative versions of what we have so far
ints_special = ints_special.union(-x for x in ints_special)
# bit-flipped versions of what we have so far
ints_special = ints_special.union(~x for x in ints_special)
ints_special = list(ints_special)
# sort them (because hypothesis simplifies towards earlier elements in the list)
ints_special.sort(key=lambda element: (abs(element), element < 0))

ints = strategies.sampled_from(ints_special) | strategies.integers()

Now we get data like this:

1110 1110
...10000000000000000001 ...10000??0??0000??00?1
1 ??0??0000??00?1
1 ?
...10101100 ...10101100
110000000011001010111011111111111111011110010001001100110001011 ...?0?101?
110000000011001010111011111111111111011110010001001100110001011 ??00000000??00?0?0???0??????????????0????00?000?00??00??000?0??
...1011111111111111111111111111 ...?11?11??
...1011111111111111111111111111 ...?0??????????????????????????
0 ...?0??????????????????????????
101101 101101
111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
10111 10111
...101100 ...1?111011?0
101000 ?001010?0
101000 ?0?000
110010 110010
...100111 ...100111
1111011010010 1111011010010
...1000000000000000000000000000000000000 ...1000000000000000000000000000000000000

We can also write a test that checks that the somewhat tricky logic in __str__ and from_str is correct, by making sure that the two functions round-trip (ie converting a KnownBits to a string and then back to a KnownBits instance produces the same abstract value).

@given(knownbits_and_contained_number)
def test_hypothesis_str_roundtrips(t1):
    k1, n1 = t1
    s = str(k1)
    k2 = KnownBits.from_str(s)
    assert k1.ones == k2.ones
    assert k1.unknowns == k2.unknowns

Now let's actually apply this infrastructure to test abstract_invert.

When are Transfer Functions Correct? How do we test them?

Abstract values, i.e. instances of KnownBits represent sets of concrete values. We want the transfer functions to compute overapproximations of the concrete values. So if we have an arbitrary abstract value k, with a concrete number n that is a member of the abstract values (i.e. k.contains(n) == True) then the result of the concrete operation op(n) must be a member of the result of the abstract operation k.abstract_op() (i.e. k.abstract_op().contains(op(n)) == True).

Checking the correctness/overapproximation property is a good match for hypothesis. Here's what the test for abstract_invert looks like:

@given(knownbits_and_contained_number)
def test_hypothesis_invert(t):
    k1, n1 = t1
    n2 = ~n1 # compute the real result
    k2 = k1.abstract_invert() # compute the abstract result
    assert k2.contains(n2) # the abstract result must contain the real result

This is the only condition needed for abstract_invert to be correct. If abstract_invert fulfils this property for every combination of abstract and concrete value then abstract_invert is correct. Note however, that this test does not actually check whether abstract_invert gives us precise results. A correct (but imprecise) implementation of abstract_invert would simply return a completely unknown result, regardless of what is known about the input KnownBits.

The "proper" CS term for this notion of correctness is called soundness. The correctness condition on the transfer functions is called a Galois connection. I won't go into any mathematical/technical details here, but wanted to at least mention the terms. I found Martin Kellogg's slides to be quite an approachable introduction to the Galois connection and how to show soundness.

Implementing Binary Transfer Functions

Now we have infrastructure in place for testing transfer functions with random inputs. With that we can start thinking about the more complicated case, that of binary operations. Let's start with the simpler ones, and and or. For and, we can know a 0 bit in the result if either of the input bits are known 0; or we can know a 1 bit in the result if both input bits are known 1. Otherwise the resulting bit is unknown. Let's look at all the combinations:

and
input1: 000111???
input2: 01?01?01? 
result: 00001?0??

class KnownBits:
    ...

    def abstract_and(self, other):
        ones = self.ones & other.ones # known ones
        knowns = self.zeros | other.zeros | ones
        return KnownBits(ones, ~knowns)

Here's an example unit-test and a property-based test for and:

def test_and():
    # test all combinations of 0, 1, ? in one example
    k1 = KnownBits.from_str('01?01?01?')
    k2 = KnownBits.from_str('000111???')
    res = k1.abstract_and(k2)     # should be: 0...00001?0??
    assert str(res) ==   "1?0??"

@given(knownbits_and_contained_number, knownbits_and_contained_number)
def test_hypothesis_and(t1, t2):
    k1, n1 = t1
    k2, n2 = t2
    k3 = k1.abstract_and(k2)
    n3 = n1 & n2
    assert k3.contains(n3)

To implement or is pretty similar. The result is known 1 where either of the inputs is 1. The result is known 0 where both inputs are known 0, and ? otherwise.

or
input1: 000111???
input2: 01?01?01? 
result: 01?111?1?

class KnownBits:
    ...

    def abstract_or(self, other):
        ones = self.ones | other.ones
        zeros = self.zeros & other.zeros
        knowns = ones | zeros
        return KnownBits(ones, ~knowns)

Here's an example unit-test and a property-based test for or:

def test_or():
    k1 = KnownBits.from_str('01?01?01?')
    k2 = KnownBits.from_str('000111???')
    res = k1.abstract_or(k2)     # should be:  0...01?111?1?
    assert str(res) ==   "1?111?1?"

@given(knownbits_and_contained_number, knownbits_and_contained_number)
def test_hypothesis_or(t1, t2):
    k1, n1 = t1
    k2, n2 = t2
    k3 = k1.abstract_or(k2)
    n3 = n1 | n2
    assert k3.contains(n3)

Implementing support for abstract_xor is relatively simple, and left as an exercise :-).

Addition and Subtraction

invert, and, and or are relatively simple transfer functions to write, because they compose over the individual bits of the integers. The arithmetic functions add and sub are significantly harder, because of carries and borrows. Coming up with the formulas for them and gaining an intuitive understanding is quite tricky and involves carefully going through a few examples with pen and paper. When implementing this in PyPy, Nico and I didn't come up with the implementation ourselves, but instead took them from the Tristate Numbers paper. Here's the code, with example tests and hypothesis tests:

class KnownBits:
    ...

    def abstract_add(self, other):
        sum_ones = self.ones + other.ones
        sum_unknowns = self.unknowns + other.unknowns
        all_carries = sum_ones + sum_unknowns
        ones_carries = all_carries ^ sum_ones
        unknowns = self.unknowns | other.unknowns | ones_carries
        ones = sum_ones & ~unknowns
        return KnownBits(ones, unknowns)

    def abstract_sub(self, other):
        diff_ones = self.ones - other.ones
        val_borrows = (diff_ones + self.unknowns) ^ (diff_ones - other.unknowns)
        unknowns = self.unknowns | other.unknowns | val_borrows
        ones = diff_ones & ~unknowns
        return KnownBits(ones, unknowns)


def test_add():
    k1 = KnownBits.from_str('0?10?10?10')
    k2 = KnownBits.from_str('0???111000')
    res = k1.abstract_add(k2)
    assert str(res) ==   "?????01?10"

def test_sub():
    k1 = KnownBits.from_str('0?10?10?10')
    k2 = KnownBits.from_str('0???111000')
    res = k1.abstract_sub(k2)
    assert str(res) ==   "...?11?10"
    k1 = KnownBits.from_str(    '...1?10?10?10')
    k2 = KnownBits.from_str('...10000???111000')
    res = k1.abstract_sub(k2)
    assert str(res) ==   "111?????11?10"

@given(knownbits_and_contained_number, knownbits_and_contained_number)
def test_hypothesis_add(t1, t2):
    k1, n1 = t1
    k2, n2 = t2
    k3 = k1.abstract_add(k2)
    n3 = n1 + n2
    assert k3.contains(n3)

@given(knownbits_and_contained_number, knownbits_and_contained_number)
def test_hypothesis_sub(t1, t2):
    k1, n1 = t1
    k2, n2 = t2
    k3 = k1.abstract_sub(k2)
    n3 = n1 - n2
    assert k3.contains(n3)

Now we are in a pretty good situation, and have implemented abstract versions for a bunch of important arithmetic and binary functions. What's also surprising is that the implementation of all of the transfer functions is quite efficient. We didn't have to write loops over the individual bits at all, instead we found closed form expressions using primitive operations on the underlying integers ones and unknowns. This means that computing the results of abstract operations is quite efficient, which is important when using the abstract domain in the context of a JIT compiler.

Proving correctness of the transfer functions with Z3

As one can probably tell from my recent posts, I've been thinking about compiler correctness a lot. Getting the transfer functions absolutely correct is really crucial, because a bug in them would lead to miscompilation of Python code when the abstract domain is added to the JIT. While the randomized tests are great, it's still entirely possible for them to miss bugs. The state space for the arguments of a binary transfer function is 3**64 * 3**64, and if only a small part of that contains wrong behaviour it would be really unlikely for us to find it with random tests by chance. Therefore I was reluctant to merge the PyPy branch that contained the new abstract domain for a long time.

To increase our confidence in the correctness of the transfer functions further, we can use Z3 to prove their correctness, which gives us much stronger guarantees (not 100%, obviously). In this subsection I will show how to do that.

Here's an attempt to do this manually in the Python repl:

>>>> import z3
>>>> solver = z3.Solver()
>>>> # like last blog post, proof by failing to find counterexamples
>>>> def prove(cond): assert solver.check(z3.Not(cond)) == z3.unsat
>>>>
>>>> # let's set up a z3 bitvector variable for an arbitrary concrete value
>>>> n1 = z3.BitVec('concrete_value', 64)
>>>> n1
concrete_value
>>>> # due to operator overloading we can manipulate z3 formulas
>>>> n2 = ~n1
>>>> n2
~concrete_value
>>>> 
>>>> # now z3 bitvector variables for the ones and zeros fields
>>>> ones = z3.BitVec('abstract_ones', 64)
>>>> unknowns = z3.BitVec('abstract_unknowns', 64)
>>>> # we construct a KnownBits instance with the z3 variables
>>>> k1 = KnownBits(ones, unknowns)
>>>> # due to operator overloading we can call the methods on k1:
>>>> k2 = k1.abstract_invert()
>>>> k2.ones
~abstract_unknowns & ~abstract_ones
>>>> k2.unknowns
abstract_unknowns
>>>> # here's the correctness condition that we want to prove:
>>>> k2.contains(n2)
~concrete_value & ~abstract_unknowns ==
~abstract_unknowns & ~abstract_ones
>>>> # let's try
>>>> prove(k2.contains(n2))
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in prove
AssertionError
>>>> # it doesn't work! let's look at the counterexample to see why:
>>>> solver.model()
[abstract_unknowns = 0,
 abstract_ones = 0,
 concrete_value = 1]
>>>> # we can build a KnownBits instance with the values in the
>>>> # counterexample:
>>>> ~1 # concrete result
-2
>>>> counter_example_k1 = KnownBits(0, 0)
>>>> counter_example_k1
KnownBits.from_constant(0)
>>>> counter_example_k2 = counter_example_k1.abstract_invert()
>>>> counter_example_k2
KnownBits.from_constant(-1)
>>>> # let's check the failing condition
>>>> counter_example_k2.contains(~1)
False

What is the problem here? We didn't tell Z3 that n1 was supposed to be a member of k1. We can add this as a precondition to the solver, and then the prove works:

>>>> solver.add(k1.contains(n1))
>>>> prove(k2.contains(n2)) # works!

This is super cool! It's really a proof about the actual implementation, because we call the implementation methods directly, and due to the operator overloading that Z3 does we can be sure that we are actually checking a formula that corresponds to the Python code. This eliminates one source of errors in formal methods.

Doing the proof manually on the Python REPL is kind of annoying though, and we also would like to make sure that the proofs are re-done when we change the code. What we would really like to do is writing the proofs as a unit-test that we can run while developing and in CI. Doing this is possible, and the unit tests that really perform proofs look pleasingly similar to the Hypothesis-based ones.

First we need to set up a bit of infrastructure:

INTEGER_WIDTH = 64

def BitVec(name):
    return z3.BitVec(name, INTEGER_WIDTH)

def BitVecVal(val):
    return z3.BitVecVal(val, INTEGER_WIDTH)

def z3_setup_variables():
    # instantiate a solver
    solver = z3.Solver()

    # a Z3 variable for the first concrete value
    n1 = BitVec("n1")
    # a KnownBits instances that uses Z3 variables as its ones and unknowns,
    # representing the first abstract value
    k1 = KnownBits(BitVec("n1_ones"), BitVec("n1_unkowns"))
    # add the precondition to the solver that the concrete value n1 must be a
    # member of the abstract value k1
    solver.add(k1.contains(n1))

    # a Z3 variable for the second concrete value
    n2 = BitVec("n2")
    # a KnownBits instances for the second abstract value
    k2 = KnownBits(BitVec("n2_ones"), BitVec("n2_unkowns"))
    # add the precondition linking n2 and k2 to the solver
    solver.add(k2.contains(n2))
    return solver, k1, n1, k2, n2

def prove(cond, solver):
    z3res = solver.check(z3.Not(cond))
    if z3res != z3.unsat:
        assert z3res == z3.sat # can't be timeout, we set no timeout
        # make the model with the counterexample global, to make inspecting the
        # bug easier when running pytest --pdb
        global model
        model = solver.model()
        print(f"n1={model.eval(n1)}, n2={model.eval(n2)}")
        counter_example_k1 = KnownBits(model.eval(k1.ones).as_signed_long(),
                                       model.eval(k1.unknowns).as_signed_long())
        counter_example_k2 = KnownBits(model.eval(k2.ones).as_signed_long(),
                                       model.eval(k2.unknowns).as_signed_long())
        print(f"k1={counter_example_k1}, k2={counter_example_k2}")
        print(f"but {cond=} evaluates to {model.eval(cond)}")
        raise ValueError(solver.model())

And then we can write proof-unit-tests like this:

def test_z3_abstract_invert():
    solver, k1, n1, _, _ = z3_setup_variables()
    k2 = k1.abstract_invert()
    n2 = ~n1
    prove(k2.contains(n2), solver)

def test_z3_abstract_and():
    solver, k1, n1, k2, n2 = z3_setup_variables()
    k3 = k1.abstract_and(k2)
    n3 = n1 & n2
    prove(k3.contains(n3), solver)

def test_z3_abstract_or():
    solver, k1, n1, k2, n2 = z3_setup_variables()
    k3 = k1.abstract_or(k2)
    n3 = n1 | n2
    prove(k3.contains(n3), solver)

def test_z3_abstract_add():
    solver, k1, n1, k2, n2 = z3_setup_variables()
    k3 = k1.abstract_add(k2)
    n3 = n1 + n2
    prove(k3.contains(n3), solver)

def test_z3_abstract_sub():
    solver, k1, n1, k2, n2 = z3_setup_variables()
    k3 = k1.abstract_sub(k2)
    n3 = n1 - n2
    prove(k3.contains(n3), solver)

It's possible to write a bit more Python-metaprogramming-magic and unify the Hypothesis and Z3 tests into the same test definition.1

Cases where this style of Z3 proof doesn't work

Unfortunately the approach described in the previous section only works for a very small number of cases. It breaks down as soon as the KnownBits methods that we're calling contain any if conditions (including hidden ones like the short-circuiting and and or in Python). Let's look at an example and implement abstract_eq. eq is supposed to be an operation that compares two integers and returns 0 or 1 if they are different or equal, respectively. Implementing this in knownbits looks like this (with example and hypothesis tests):

class KnownBits:
    ...

    def abstract_eq(self, other):
        # the result is a 0, 1, or ?

        # if they are both the same constant, they must be equal
        if self.is_constant() and other.is_constant() and self.ones == other.ones:
            return KnownBits.from_constant(1)
        # check whether we have known disagreeing bits, then we know the result
        # is 0
        if self._disagrees(other):
            return KnownBits.from_constant(0)
        return KnownBits(0, 1) # an unknown boolean

    def _disagrees(self, other):
        # check whether the bits disagree in any place where both are known
        both_known = self.knowns & other.knowns
        return self.ones & both_known != other.ones & both_known

def test_eq():
    k1 = KnownBits.from_str('...?')
    k2 = KnownBits.from_str('...?')
    assert str(k1.abstract_eq(k2)) == '?'
    k1 = KnownBits.from_constant(10)
    assert str(k1.abstract_eq(k1)) == '1'
    k1 = KnownBits.from_constant(10)
    k2 = KnownBits.from_constant(20)
    assert str(k1.abstract_eq(k2)) == '0'

@given(knownbits_and_contained_number, knownbits_and_contained_number)
def test_hypothesis_eq(t1, t2):
    k1, n1 = t1
    k2, n2 = t2
    k3 = k1.abstract_eq(k2)
    assert k3.contains(int(n1 == n2))

Trying to do the proof in the same style as before breaks:

>>>> k3 = k1.abstract_eq(k2)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "knownbits.py", line 246, in abstract_eq
    if self._disagrees(other):
  File "venv/site-packages/z3/z3.py", line 381, in __bool__
    raise Z3Exception("Symbolic expressions cannot be cast to concrete Boolean values.")
z3.z3types.Z3Exception: Symbolic expressions cannot be cast to concrete Boolean values.

We cannot call abstract_eq on a KnownBits with Z3 variables as fields, because once we hit an if statement, the whole approach of relying on the operator overloading breaks down. Z3 doesn't actually parse the Python code or anything advanced like that, we rather build an expression only by running the code and letting the Z3 formulas build up.

To still prove the correctness of abstract_eq we need to manually transform the control flow logic of the function into a Z3 formula that uses the z3.If expression, using a small helper function:

def z3_cond(b, trueval=1, falseval=0):
    return z3.If(b, BitVecVal(trueval), BitVecVal(falseval))

def z3_abstract_eq(k1, k2):
    # follow the *logic* of abstract_eq, we can't call it due to the ifs in it
    case1cond = z3.And(k1.is_constant(), k2.is_constant(), k1.ones == k2.ones)
    case2cond = k1._disagrees(k2)

    # ones is 1 in the first case, 0 otherwise
    ones = z3_cond(case1cond, 1, 0)

    # in the first two cases, unknowns is 0, 1 otherwise
    unknowns = z3_cond(z3.Or(case1cond, case2cond), 0, 1)
    return KnownBits(ones, unknowns)

def test_z3_abstract_eq_logic():
    solver, k1, n1, k2, n2 = z3_setup_variables()
    n3 = z3_cond(n1 == n2) # concrete result
    k3 = z3_abstract_eq(k1, k2)
    prove(k3.contains(n3), solver)

This proof works. It is a lot less satisfying than the previous ones though, because we could have done an error in the manual transcription from Python code to Z3 formulas (there are possibly more heavy-handed approaches where we do this transformation more automatically using e.g. the ast module to analyze the source code, but that's a much more complicated researchy project). To lessen this problem somewhat we can factor out the parts of the logic that don't have any conditions into small helper methods (like _disagrees in this example) and use them in the manual conversion of the code to Z3 formulas.2

The final condition that Z3 checks, btw, is this one:

If(n1 == n2, 1, 0) &
~If(Or(And(n1_unkowns == 0,
           n2_unkowns == 0,
           n1_ones == n2_ones),
       n1_ones & ~n1_unkowns & ~n2_unkowns !=
       n2_ones & ~n1_unkowns & ~n2_unkowns),
    0, 1) ==
If(And(n1_unkowns == 0, n2_unkowns == 0, n1_ones == n2_ones),
   1, 0)

Making Statements about Precision

So far we have only used Z3 to prove statements about correctness, i.e. that our abstract operations overapproximate what can happen with concrete values. While proving this property is essential if we want to avoid miscompilation, correctness alone is not a very strong constraint on the implementation of our abstract transfer functions. We could simply return Knownbits.unknowns() for every abstract_* method and the resulting overapproximation would be correct, but useless in practice.

It's much harder to make statements about whether the transfer functions are maximally precise. There are two aspects of precision I want to discuss in this section, however.

The first aspect is that we would really like it if the transfer functions compute the maximally precise results for singleton sets. If all abstract arguments of an operations are constants, i.e. contain only a single concrete element, then we know that the resulting set also has only a single element. We can prove that all our transfer functions have this property:

def test_z3_prove_constant_folding():
    solver, k1, n1, k2, n2 = z3_setup_variables()
    k3 = k1.abstract_invert()
    prove(z3.Implies(k1.is_constant(),
                     k3.is_constant()), solver)

    k3 = k1.abstract_and(k2)
    prove(z3.Implies(z3.And(k1.is_constant(), k2.is_constant()),
                     k3.is_constant()), solver)

    k3 = k1.abstract_or(k2)
    prove(z3.Implies(z3.And(k1.is_constant(), k2.is_constant()),
                     k3.is_constant()), solver)

    k3 = k1.abstract_sub(k2)
    prove(z3.Implies(z3.And(k1.is_constant(), k2.is_constant()),
                     k3.is_constant()), solver)

    k3 = z3_abstract_eq(k1, k2)
    prove(z3.Implies(z3.And(k1.is_constant(), k2.is_constant()),
                     k3.is_constant()), solver)

Proving with Z3 that the transfer functions are maximally precise for non-constant arguments seems to be relatively hard. I tried a few completely rigorous approaches and failed. The paper Sound, Precise, and Fast Abstract Interpretation with Tristate Numbers contains an optimality proof for the transfer functions of addition and subtraction, so we can be certain that they are as precise as is possible.

I still want to show an approach for trying to find concrete examples of abstract values that are less precise than they could be, using a combination of Hypothesis and Z3. The idea is to use hypothesis to pick random abstract values. Then we compute the abstract result using our transfer function. Afterwards we can ask Z3 to find us an abstract result that is better than the one our transfer function produced. If Z3 finds a better abstract result, we have a concrete example of imprecision for our transfer function. Those tests aren't strict proofs, because they rely on generating random abstract values, but they can still be valuable (not for the transfer functions in this blog post, which are all optimal).

Here is what the code looks like (this is a little bit bonus content, I'll not explain the details and can only hope that the comments are somewhat helpful):

@given(random_knownbits_and_contained_number, random_knownbits_and_contained_number)
@settings(deadline=None)
def test_check_precision(t1, t2):
    k1, n1 = t1
    k2, n2 = t2
    # apply transfer function
    k3 = k1.abstract_add(k2)
    example_res = n1 + n2

    # try to find a better version of k3 with Z3
    solver = z3.Solver()
    solver.set("timeout", 8000)

    var1 = BitVec('v1')
    var2 = BitVec('v2')

    ones = BitVec('ones')
    unknowns = BitVec('unknowns')
    better_k3 = KnownBits(ones, unknowns)
    print(k1, k2, k3)

    # we're trying to find an example for a better k3, so we use check, without
    # negation:
    res = solver.check(z3.And(
        # better_k3 should be a valid knownbits instance
        better_k3.is_well_formed(),
        # it should be better than k3, ie there are known bits in better_k3
        # that we don't have in k3
        better_k3.knowns & ~k3.knowns != 0,
        # now encode the correctness condition for better_k3 with a ForAll:
        # for all concrete values var1 and var2, it must hold that if
        # var1 is in k1 and var2 is in k2 it follows that var1 + var2 is in
        # better_k3
        z3.ForAll(
        [var1, var2],
        z3.Implies(
            z3.And(k1.contains(var1), k2.contains(var2)),
            better_k3.contains(var1 + var2)))))
    # if this query is satisfiable, we have found a better result for the
    # abstract_add
    if res == z3.sat:
        model = solver.model()
        rk3 = KnownBits(model.eval(ones).as_signed_long(), model.eval(unknowns).as_signed_long())
        print("better", rk3)
        assert 0
    if res == z3.unknown:
        print("timeout")

It does not actually fail for abstract_add (nor the other abstract functions). To see the test failing we can add some imprecision to the implementation of abstract_add to see Hypothesis and Z3 find examples of values that are not optimally precise (for example by setting some bits of unknowns in the implementation of abstract_add unconditionally).

Using the Abstract Domain in the Toy Optimizer for Generalized Constant Folding

Now after all this work we can finally actually use the knownbits abstract domain in the toy optimizer. The code for this follows Max' intro post about abstract interpretation quite closely.

For completeness sake, in the fold there's the basic infrastructure classes that make up the IR again (they are identical or at least extremely close to the previous toy posts).

toy infrastructure
class Value:
    def find(self):
        raise NotImplementedError("abstract")


@dataclass(eq=False)
class Operation(Value):
    name : str
    args : list[Value]

    forwarded : Optional[Value] = None

    def find(self) -> Value:
        op = self
        while isinstance(op, Operation):
            next = op.forwarded
            if next is None:
                return op
            op = next
        return op

    def arg(self, index):
        return self.args[index].find()

    def make_equal_to(self, value : Value):
        self.find().forwarded = value


@dataclass(eq=False)
class Constant(Value):
    value : object

    def find(self):
        return self


class Block(list):
    def __getattr__(self, opname):
        def wraparg(arg):
            if not isinstance(arg, Value):
                arg = Constant(arg)
            return arg
        def make_op(*args):
            op = Operation(opname,
                [wraparg(arg) for arg in args])
            self.append(op)
            return op
        return make_op


def bb_to_str(l : Block, varprefix : str = "var"):
    def arg_to_str(arg : Value):
        if isinstance(arg, Constant):
            return str(arg.value)
        else:
            return varnames[arg]

    varnames = {}
    res = []
    for index, op in enumerate(l):
        # give the operation a name used while
        # printing:
        var =  f"{varprefix}{index}"
        varnames[op] = var
        arguments = ", ".join(
            arg_to_str(op.arg(i))
                for i in range(len(op.args))
        )
        strop = f"{var} = {op.name}({arguments})"
        res.append(strop)
    return "\n".join(res)

Now we can write some first tests, the first one simply checking constant folding:

def test_constfold_two_ops():
    bb = Block()
    var0 = bb.getarg(0)
    var1 = bb.int_add(5, 4)
    var2 = bb.int_add(var1, 10)
    var3 = bb.int_add(var2, var0)

    opt_bb = simplify(bb)
    assert bb_to_str(opt_bb, "optvar") == """\
optvar0 = getarg(0)
optvar1 = int_add(19, optvar0)"""

Calling the transfer functions on constant KnownBits produces a constant results, as we have seen. Therefore "regular" constant folding should hopefully be achieved by optimizing with the KnownBits abstract domain too.

The next two tests are slightly more complicated and can't be optimized by regular constant-folding. They follow the motivating examples from the start of this blog post, a hundred years ago:

def test_constfold_via_knownbits():
    bb = Block()
    var0 = bb.getarg(0)
    var1 = bb.int_or(var0, 1)
    var2 = bb.int_and(var1, 1)
    var3 = bb.dummy(var2)

    opt_bb = simplify(bb)
    assert bb_to_str(opt_bb, "optvar") == """\
optvar0 = getarg(0)
optvar1 = int_or(optvar0, 1)
optvar2 = dummy(1)"""

def test_constfold_alignment_check():
    bb = Block()
    var0 = bb.getarg(0)
    var1 = bb.int_invert(0b111)
    # mask off the lowest three bits, thus var2 is aligned
    var2 = bb.int_and(var0, var1)
    # add 16 to aligned quantity
    var3 = bb.int_add(var2, 16)
    # check alignment of result
    var4 = bb.int_and(var3, 0b111)
    var5 = bb.int_eq(var4, 0)
    # var5 should be const-folded to 1
    var6 = bb.dummy(var5)

    opt_bb = simplify(bb)
    assert bb_to_str(opt_bb, "optvar") == """\
optvar0 = getarg(0)
optvar1 = int_and(optvar0, -8)
optvar2 = int_add(optvar1, 16)
optvar3 = dummy(1)"""

Here is simplify to make these tests pass:

def unknown_transfer_functions(*abstract_args):
    return KnownBits.all_unknown()


def simplify(bb: Block) -> Block:
    abstract_values = {} # dict mapping Operation to KnownBits

    def knownbits_of(val : Value):
        if isinstance(val, Constant):
            return KnownBits.from_constant(val.value)
        return abstract_values[val]

    opt_bb = Block()
    for op in bb:
        # apply the transfer function on the abstract arguments
        name_without_prefix = op.name.removeprefix("int_")
        method_name = f"abstract_{name_without_prefix}"
        transfer_function = getattr(KnownBits, method_name, unknown_transfer_functions)
        abstract_args = [knownbits_of(arg.find()) for arg in op.args]
        abstract_res = abstract_values[op] = transfer_function(*abstract_args)
        # if the result is a constant, we optimize the operation away and make
        # it equal to the constant result
        if abstract_res.is_constant():
            op.make_equal_to(Constant(abstract_res.ones))
            continue
        # otherwise emit the op
        opt_bb.append(op)
    return opt_bb

The code follows the approach from the previous blog post very closely. The only difference is that we apply the transfer function first, to be able to detect whether the abstract domain can tell us that the result has to always be a constant. This code makes all three tests pass.

Using the KnownBits Domain for Conditional Peephole Rewrites

So far we are only using the KnownBits domain to find out that certain operations have to produce a constant. We can also use the KnownBits domain to check whether certain operation rewrites are correct. Let's use one of the examples from the Mining JIT traces for missing optimizations with Z3 post, where Z3 found the inefficiency (x << 4) & -0xf == x << 4 in PyPy JIT traces. We don't have shift operations, but we want to generalize this optimization anyway. The general form of this rewrite is that under some circumstances x & y == x, and we can use the KnownBits domain to detect situations where this must be true.

To understand when x & y == x is true, we can think about individual pairs of bits a and b. If a == 0, then a & b == 0 & b == 0 == a. If b == 1 then a & b == a & 1 == a. So if either a == 0 or b == 1 is true, a & b == a follows. And if either of these conditions is true for all the bits of x and y, we can know that x & y == x.

We can write a method on KnownBits to check for this condition:

class KnownBits:
    ...

    def is_and_identity(self, other):
        """ Return True if n1 & n2 == n1 for any n1 in self and n2 in other.
        (or, equivalently, return True if n1 | n2 == n2)"""
        return self.zeros | other.ones == -1

Since my reasoning about this feels ripe for errors, let's check that our understanding is correct with Z3:

def test_prove_is_and_identity():
    solver, k1, n1, k2, n2 = z3_setup_variables()
    prove(z3.Implies(k1.is_and_identity(k2), n1 & n2 == n1), solver)

Now let's use this in the toy optimizer. Here are two tests for this rewrite:

def test_remove_redundant_and():
    bb = Block()
    var0 = bb.getarg(0)
    var1 = bb.int_invert(0b1111)
    # mask off the lowest four bits
    var2 = bb.int_and(var0, var1)
    # applying the same mask is not redundant
    var3 = bb.int_and(var2, var1)
    var4 = bb.dummy(var3)

    opt_bb = simplify(bb)
    assert bb_to_str(opt_bb, "optvar") == """\
optvar0 = getarg(0)
optvar1 = int_and(optvar0, -16)
optvar2 = dummy(optvar1)"""

def test_remove_redundant_and_more_complex():
    bb = Block()
    var0 = bb.getarg(0)
    var1 = bb.getarg(1)
    # var2 has bit pattern ????
    var2 = bb.int_and(var0, 0b1111)
    # var3 has bit pattern ...?1111
    var3 = bb.int_or(var1, 0b1111)
    # var4 is just var2
    var4 = bb.int_and(var2, var3)
    var5 = bb.dummy(var4)

    opt_bb = simplify(bb)
    assert bb_to_str(opt_bb, "optvar") == """\
optvar0 = getarg(0)
optvar1 = getarg(1)
optvar2 = int_and(optvar0, 15)
optvar3 = int_or(optvar1, 15)
optvar4 = dummy(optvar2)"""

The first test could also be made to pass by implementing a reassociation optimization that turns (x & c1) & c2 into x & (c1 & c2) and then constant-folds the second and. But here we want to use KnownBits and conditionally rewrite int_and to its first argument. So to make the tests pass, we can change simplify like this:

def simplify(bb: Block) -> Block:
    abstract_values = {} # dict mapping Operation to KnownBits

    def knownbits_of(val : Value):
        ...

    opt_bb = Block()
    for op in bb:
        # apply the transfer function on the abstract arguments
        name_without_prefix = op.name.removeprefix("int_")
        method_name = f"abstract_{name_without_prefix}"
        transfer_function = getattr(KnownBits, method_name, unknown_transfer_functions)
        abstract_args = [knownbits_of(arg.find()) for arg in op.args]
        abstract_res = abstract_values[op] = transfer_function(*abstract_args)
        # if the result is a constant, we optimize the operation away and make
        # it equal to the constant result
        if abstract_res.is_constant():
            op.make_equal_to(Constant(abstract_res.ones))
            continue
        # <<<< new code
        # conditionally rewrite int_and(x, y) to x
        if op.name == "int_and":
            k1, k2 = abstract_args
            if k1.is_and_identity(k2):
                op.make_equal_to(op.arg(0))
                continue
        # >>>> end changes
        opt_bb.append(op)
    return opt_bb

And with that, the new tests pass as well. A real implementation would also check the other argument order, but we leave that out for the sake of brevity.

This rewrite also generalizes the rewrites int_and(0, x) -> 0 and int_and(-1, x) -> x, let's add a test for those:

def test_remove_and_simple():
    bb = Block()
    var0 = bb.getarg(0)
    var1 = bb.getarg(1)
    var2 = bb.int_and(0, var0) # == 0
    var3 = bb.int_invert(var2) # == -1
    var4 = bb.int_and(var1, var3) # == var1
    var5 = bb.dummy(var4)

    opt_bb = simplify(bb)
    assert bb_to_str(opt_bb, "optvar") == """\
optvar0 = getarg(0)
optvar1 = getarg(1)
optvar2 = dummy(optvar1)"""

This test just passes. And that's it for this post!

Conclusion

In this post we've seen the implementation, testing and proofs about a 'known bits' abstract domain, as well as its use in the toy optimizer to generalize constant folding, and to implement conditional peephole rewrites.

In the next posts I'll write about the real implementation of a knownbits domain in PyPy's JIT, its combination with the existing interval abstract domain, how to deal with gaining information from conditions in the program, and some lose ends.

Sources:

  1. There's a subtletly about the Z3 proofs that I'm sort of glossing over here. Python integers are of arbitrary width, and the KnownBits code is actually carefully written to work for integers of any size. This property is tested by the Hypothesis tests, which don't limit the sizes of the generated random integers. However, the Z3 proofs only check bitvectors of a fixed bitwidth of 64. There are various ways to deal with this situation. For most "real" compilers, the bitwidth of integers would be fixed anyway. Then the components ones and unknowns of the KnownBits class would use the number of bits the corresponding integer variable has, and the Z3 proofs would use the same width. This is what we do in the PyPy JIT. ↩

  2. The less close connection between implementation and proof for abstract_eq is one of the reasons why it makes sense to do unit-testing in addition to proofs. For a more detailed explanation of why both tests and proofs are good to have, see Jeremy Siek's blog post, as well as the Knuth quote. ↩

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