Ensuring correctness is crucial for code generation. Formal verification offers a definitive assurance of correctness, but demands substantial human effort in proof construction and hence raises a pressing need for automation. The primary obstacle lies in the severe lack of data – there is much less proof than code for LLMs to train upon. In this paper, we introduce SAFE, a novel framework that overcomes the lack of human-written proof to enable automated proof generation of Rust code. SAFE establishes a self-evolving cycle where data synthesis and fine-tuning collaborate to enhance the model capability, leveraging the definitive power of a symbolic verifier in telling correct proof from incorrect ones. SAFE also re-purposes the large number of synthesized incorrect proofs to train the self-debugging capability of the fine-tuned models, empowering them to fix incorrect proofs based on the verifier’s feedback. SAFE demonstrates superior efficiency and precision compared to GPT-4o. Through tens of thousands of synthesized proofs and the self-debugging mechanism, we improve the capability of open-source models, initially unacquainted with formal verification, to automatically write proof for Rust code. This advancement leads to a significant improvement in performance, achieving a 70.50% accuracy rate in a benchmark crafted by human experts, a significant leap over GPT-4o’s performance of 24.46%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ensuring correctness is crucial for code generation. Formal verification offers a definitive assurance of correctness, but demands substantial human effort in proof construction and hence raises a pressing need for automation. The primary obstacle lies in the severe lack of data – there is much less proof than code for LLMs to train upon. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","footnotes":""},"msr-content-type":[3],"msr-research-highlight":[],"research-area":[13556,13560,13547],"msr-publication-type":[193724],"msr-product-type":[],"msr-focus-area":[],"msr-platform":[],"msr-download-source":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[269148,269142],"msr-field-of-study":[246691],"msr-conference":[],"msr-journal":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-1097751","msr-research-item","type-msr-research-item","status-publish","hentry","msr-research-area-artificial-intelligence","msr-research-area-programming-languages-software-engineering","msr-research-area-systems-and-networking","msr-locale-en_us","msr-post-option-approved-for-river","msr-post-option-include-in-river","msr-field-of-study-computer-science"],"msr_publishername":"","msr_edition":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_published_date":"2024-10-20","msr_host":"","msr_duration":"","msr_version":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_journal":"","msr_volume":"","msr_number":"","msr_editors":"","msr_series":"","msr_issue":"","msr_organization":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_notes":"","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":1,"msr_main_download":"","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_doi":"","msr_publication_uploader":[{"type":"url","viewUrl":"false","id":"false","title":"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2410.15756","label_id":"243109","label":0}],"msr_related_uploader":"","msr_attachments":[],"msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"text","value":"Tianyu Chen","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Shuai Lu","user_id":42159,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Shuai Lu"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Shan Lu","user_id":43215,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Shan Lu"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Yeyun Gong","user_id":39186,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Yeyun Gong"},{"type":"text","value":"Chenyuan Yang","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Xuheng Li","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Md Rakib Hossain Misu","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Hao Yu","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Nan Duan","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Peng Cheng","user_id":33225,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Peng Cheng"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Fan Yang","user_id":31782,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Fan Yang"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Shuvendu Lahiri","user_id":33640,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Shuvendu Lahiri"},{"type":"text","value":"Tao Xie","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Lidong Zhou","user_id":32673,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Lidong Zhou"}],"msr_impact_theme":[],"msr_research_lab":[199560,199565],"msr_event":[],"msr_group":[1021704,144927,920469],"msr_project":[1097610],"publication":[],"video":[],"download":[],"msr_publication_type":"miscellaneous","related_content":{"projects":[{"ID":1097610,"post_title":"Practical System Verification","post_name":"practical-system-verification","post_type":"msr-project","post_date":"2024-10-25 14:55:19","post_modified":"2024-11-06 22:50:21","post_status":"publish","permalink":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/practical-system-verification\/","post_excerpt":"Formal verification is a promising approach to eliminate bugs at compile time, before software ships. 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