TypeDis: A Type System for Disentanglement

Abstract

Disentanglement is a runtime property of parallel programs guaranteeing that parallel tasks remain oblivious to each other's allocations. As demonstrated in the MaPLe compiler and run-time system, disentanglement can be exploited for fast automatic memory management, especially task-local garbage collection with no synchronization between parallel tasks. However, as a low-level property, disentanglement can be difficult to reason about for programmers. The only means of statically verifying disentanglement so far has been DisLog, an Iris-fueled variant of separation logic, mechanized in the Rocq proof assistant. DisLog is a fully-featured program logic, allowing for proof of functional correctness as well as verification of disentanglement. Yet its employment requires significant expertise and per-program proof effort. This paper explores the route of automatic verification via a type system, ensuring that any well-typed program is disentangled and lifting the burden of carrying out manual proofs from the programmer. It contributes TypeDis, a type system inspired by region types, where each type is annotated with a timestamp, identifying the task that allocated it. TypeDis supports iso-recursive types as well as polymorphism over both types and timestamps. Crucially, timestamps are allowed to change during type-checking, at join points as well as via a form of subtyping, dubbed subtiming. The paper illustrates TypeDis and its features on a range of examples. The soundness of TypeDis and the examples are mechanized in the Rocq proof assistant, using an improved version of DisLog, dubbed DisLog2.

34 pages, 24 figures, extended version of the same paper accepted at POPL 2026