Minghai Lu

dblp:351/8679 · DBLP profile ↗
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5ranked-venue papers
1as first author
5since 2021 · last 2025
0009-0001-0136-3204ORCID · corroborated

Domains — the database's venue-derived domains; a paper can count in several

Software engineering, systems software and programming languages · 5 · 1 first-author · 5 since 2021
YearPublicationVenuePosition
2025 LLM-Assisted Synthesis of High-Assurance C Programs
abstract
We present SynVer — a novel, general purpose synthesizer for C programs equipped with machine-checked proofs of correctness using the Verified Software Toolchain. To do so, SynVer employs two Large Language Models (LLMs): the first generates candidate programs from user-provided specifications, and the second helps automatically construct formal proofs of their correctness in the Rocq proof assistant. To facilitate verification, SynVer places a set of syntactic restrictions on candidate programs that make them amenable to automated reasoning. SynVer uses a hybrid verification strategy that combines symbolic reasoning with LLM-powered proof generation to discharge proof obligations that the symbolic engine cannot handle on its own. We demonstrate the applicability of SynVer using a diverse set of benchmarks drawn from the program synthesis and verification literature.
Prasita Mukherjee, Minghai Lu, Benjamin Delaware
ASE2
2024 Automated Deep Learning Optimization via DSL-Based Source Code Transformation
abstract
As deep learning models become increasingly bigger and more complex, it is critical to improve model training and inference efficiency. Though a variety of highly optimized libraries and packages (known as DL kernels) have been developed, it is tedious and time-consuming to figure out which kernel to use, where to use, and how to use them correctly. To address this challenge, we propose an Automated Deep learning OPTimization approach called Adopter. We design a Domain-Specific Language (DSL) to represent DL model architectures and leverage this DSL to specify model transformation rules required to integrate a DL kernel into a model. Given the source code of a DL model and the transformation rules for a set of kernels, Adopter first performs inter-procedural analysis to identify and express the model architecture in our DSL. Then, Adopter performs scope analysis and sub-sequence matching to identify locations in the model architecture where the transformation rules can be applied. Finally, Adopter proposes a synthesis-based code transformation method to apply the transformation rule. We curated a benchmark with 199 models from Hugging Face and a diverse set of DL kernels. We found that, compared to a state-of-the-art automated code transformation technique, Adopter helps improve the precision and recall by 3% and 56%, respectively. An in-depth analysis of 9 models revealed that on average, Adopter improved the training speed by 22.7% while decreasing the GPU memory usage by 10.5%.
Minghai Lu, Cody Hao Yu, Yi-Hsiang Lai, Tianyi Zhang 0001
ISSTA2
2024 Proof Automation with Large Language Models
abstract
Interactive theorem provers such as Coq are powerful tools to formally guarantee the correctness of software. However, using these tools requires significant manual effort and expertise. While Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown promise in automatically generating informal proofs in natural language, they are less effective at generating formal proofs in interactive theorem provers. In this paper, we conduct a formative study to identify common mistakes made by LLMs when asked to generate formal proofs. By analyzing 520 proof generation errors made by GPT-3.5, we found that GPT-3.5 often identified the correct high-level structure of a proof, but struggled to get the lower-level details correct. Based on this insight, we propose PALM, a novel generate-then-repair approach that first prompts an LLM to generate an initial proof and then leverages targeted symbolic methods to iteratively repair low-level problems. We evaluate PALM on a large dataset that includes more than 10K theorems. Our results show that PALM significantly outperforms other state-of-the-art approaches, successfully proving 76.6% to 180.4% more theorems. Moreover, PALM proves 1270 theorems beyond the reach of existing approaches. We also demonstrate the generalizability of PALM across different LLMs.
Minghai Lu, Benjamin Delaware, Tianyi Zhang 0001
ASE1
2023 JITfuzz: Coverage-guided Fuzzing for JVM Just-in-Time Compilers
abstract
As a widely-used platform to support various Java-bytecode-based applications, Java Virtual Machine (JVM) incurs severe performance loss caused by its real-time program interpretation mechanism. To tackle this issue, the Just-in- Time compiler (JIT) has been widely adopted to strengthen the efficacy of JVM. Therefore, how to effectively and efficiently detect JIT bugs becomes critical to ensure the correctness of JVM. In this paper, we propose a coverage-guided fuzzing framework, namely JITfuzz, to automatically detect JIT bugs. In particular, JITfuzz adopts a set of optimization-activating mutators to trigger the usage of typical JIT optimizations, e.g., function inlining and simplification. Meanwhile, given JIT optimizations are closely coupled with program control flows, JITfuzz also adopts mutators to enrich the control flows of target programs. Moreover, JITfuzz also proposes a mutator scheduler which iteratively schedules mutators according to the coverage updates to maximize the code coverage of JIT. To evaluate the effectiveness of JITfuzz, we conduct a set of experiments based on a benchmark suite with 16 popular JVM-based projects from GitHub. The experimental results suggest that JITfuzz outperforms the state-of-the-art mutation-based and generation-based JVM fuzzers by 27.9 % and 18.6 % respectively in terms of edge coverage on average. Furthermore, JITfuzz also successfully detects 36 previously unknown bugs (including 23 JIT bugs) and 27 bugs (including 18 JIT bugs) have been confirmed by the developers.
Mingyuan Wu, Minghai Lu, Heming Cui, Junjie Chen 0003, Yuqun Zhang, Lingming Zhang 0001
ICSE2
2023 SJFuzz: Seed and Mutator Scheduling for JVM Fuzzing
abstract
While the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) plays a vital role in ensuring correct executions of Java applications, testing JVMs via generating and running class files on them can be rather challenging. The existing techniques, e.g., ClassFuzz and Classming, attempt to leverage the power of fuzzing and differential testing to cope with JVM intricacies by exposing discrepant execution results among different JVMs, i.e., inter-JVM discrepancies, for testing analytics. However, their adopted fuzzers are insufficiently guided since they include no well-designed seed and mutator scheduling mechanisms, leading to inefficient differential testing. To address such issues, in this paper, we propose SJFuzz, the first JVM fuzzing framework with seed and mutator scheduling mechanisms for automated JVM differential testing. Overall, SJFuzz aims to mutate class files via control flow mutators to facilitate the exposure of inter-JVM discrepancies. To this end, SJFuzz schedules seeds (class files) for mutations based on the discrepancy and diversity guidance. SJFuzz also schedules mutators for diversifying class file generation. To evaluate SJFuzz, we conduct an extensive study on multiple representative real-world JVMs, and the experimental results show that SJFuzz significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art mutation-based and generation-based JVM fuzzers in terms of the inter-JVM discrepancy exposure and the class file diversity. Moreover, SJFuzz successfully reported 46 potential JVM issues, and 20 of them have been confirmed as bugs and 16 have been fixed by the JVM developers.
Mingyuan Wu, Yicheng Ouyang, Minghai Lu, Junjie Chen 0003, Yingquan Zhao, Heming Cui, Guowei Yang 0001, Yuqun Zhang
ESEC/SIGSOFT FSE3