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Section: Software

The Gappa tool

Participant : Guillaume Melquiond [contact] .

Keywords: Automated theorem proving, floating-point arithmetic, fixed-point arithmetic.

Criteria for Software Self-Assessment: A-3, SO-4, SM-4, EM-3, SDL-4, OC-4.

Given a logical property involving interval enclosures of mathematical expressions, Gappa tries to verify this property and generates a formal proof of its validity. This formal proof can be machine-checked by an independent tool like the Coq proof-checker, so as to reach a high level of confidence in the certification  [79]   [109] .

Since these mathematical expressions can contain rounding operators in addition to usual arithmetic operators, Gappa is especially well suited to prove properties that arise when certifying a numerical application, be it floating-point or fixed-point. Gappa makes it easy to compute ranges of variables and bounds on absolute or relative roundoff errors.

Gappa is being used to certify parts of the mathematical libraries of several projects, including CRlibm, FLIP, and CGAL. It is distributed as open source, under a Cecill-B / GPL dual-license, at http://gappa.gforge.inria.fr/ . Part of the work on this tool was done while in the Arénaire team (Inria Rhône-Alpes), until 2008.