SPLASH 2026
Sun 4 - Fri 9 October 2026 Oakland, California, United States
co-located with SPLASH/ISSTA 2026
Tue 6 Oct 2026 10:48 - 11:06 at Junior Ballroom 3&4 - Semantics and Calculi Chair(s): Stephen Kell

Incremental computing promises large speed-ups after small input edits. Yet, most incrementality approaches merely skip unchanged work and recompute the remaining sub-computations, even when the inputs change only slightly. Differential execution avoids this by propagating data changes (i.e., deltas), and prior work has shown how to develop a provably correct differential big-step semantics. Unfortunately, that semantics must still replay the original computation at every step, squandering much of the potential gain of incrementalization. While the semantics clearly needs caching to avoid recomputations, a sound and efficient caching discipline is challenging. First, each execution step must be uniquely identified; second, the identifier must remain stable even when the preceding control flow changes. To this end, we develop lexical tracing, which identifies execution steps through their path in the derivation tree of the big-step semantics. We then extend differential execution with lexical tracing and caching to deliver, for the first time, a formally verified, asymptotically efficient account of differential execution for imperative languages. In particular, we developed a novel mechanized theory of cache stability for lexical traces and their semantic rules, which was essential in proving the differential caching semantics correct and complete in Rocq.

Tue 6 Oct

Displayed time zone: Pacific Time (US & Canada) change

10:30 - 12:00
Semantics and CalculiOOPSLA at Junior Ballroom 3&4
Chair(s): Stephen Kell King's College London
10:30
18m
Talk
Commuting Conversions and Join Points for Call-by-Push-ValueDistinguished Paper
OOPSLA
Jonathan Chan University of Pennsylvania, Madi Gudin Amherst College, Annabel Levy University of Maryland, Stephanie Weirich University of Pennsylvania
Link to publication DOI
10:48
18m
Talk
Differential Execution with Lexical Tracing
OOPSLA
DOI
11:06
18m
Talk
MGQL: An Executable, Small-Step Semantics of GQL
OOPSLA
Aditya Thimmaiah University of Texas at Austin, Tong-Nong Lin University of Texas at Austin, Milos Gligoric University of Texas at Austin
DOI Pre-print
11:24
18m
Talk
Towards Concise Binding Semantics of Late-Bound OOP Systems
OOPSLA
Joel Jakubovic Charles University
DOI Pre-print
11:42
18m
Talk
Semantics for 2D Rasterization
OOPSLA
Bhargav Kulkarni University of Utah, Henry Whiting University of Utah, Pavel Panchekha University of Utah
DOI Pre-print