Validating program execution¶

The CREATOR CLI allows to validate the execution of a program.

For this, you first need to define a YAML validator file. This file must contain the expected final state of the program, as well as any additional options you want to set for the validation.

Validator File¶

The validator file is a YAML file that can contain the following fields:

• maxCycles: The maximum number of cycles to run the program for validation. If the program exceeds this number of cycles, it will be considered invalid.
• floatThreshold: The maximum allowed error for floating point register comparisons.
• sentinel: A boolean indicating whether to enable sentinel checking (calling convention errors).
• state: An object defining the expected final state of the program, which can contain:
  • registers: A mapping of integer register names to their expected values.
  • floatRegisters: A mapping of floating point register names to their expected values.
  • memory: A mapping of memory addresses (as strings) to their expected byte values.
  • display: The expected contents of the display buffer as a string.

The validator will return, following POSIX conventions, 0 if its valid and 1 if it's not, writting the error message to the standard error stream (stderr).

Example¶

Quick example of a validator file:

maxCycles: 100
floatThreshold: 10e-10
sentinel: true
state:
  floatRegisters:
    f0: 0x40866666
  registers:
    sp: 0x0FFFFFFC
    a1: 0x0000005A
  memory:
    "0x200000": 0x45
  display: "-144"

Using the Validator¶

To use the validator file with CREATOR CLI, use the --validate option followed by the path to the validator YAML file. For example:

creator-cli -a RV32IMFD.yml -s assembly.s --validate config.yml