Fighting Concurrency Bugs through Effect-Oriented Approaches

通过面向效果的方法对抗并发错误

• 批准号: 1018180
• 负责人: Shan Lu
• 金额: $ 46.95万
• 依托单位: University of Wisconsin-Madison
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-08-01 至 2014-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1018180&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Fighting; Concurrency; Bugs; through; Effect; Fighting; Concurrency; Bugs; through; Effect

Among all types of software bugs, concurrency bugs in multi-threaded parallel programs are especially troublesome. They widely exist and are becoming increasingly severe due to the pervasiveness of multi-core machines. Existing approaches to detecting concurrency bugs mostly struggle at the complicated cause of concurrency bugs --- non-deterministic interaction among multiple threads in concurrent programs.This project aims to address the concurrency bug problem through an effect-oriented approach. Specifically, it will provide (1) a characteristic study and a deep understanding of the error propagation process of real-world concurrency bugs; (2) an effect-oriented bug detection and testing framework that can identify potential failures in a program and search for concurrency bugs leading to these failures through backward analysis; (3) a bug-fixing tool that leverages the error propagation information identified above and suggests patches to software developers; (4) a general effect-oriented philosophy that can guide other tools related to multi-threaded parallel programs. This research will improve our understanding of the dependability problem of concurrent software, provide substantial tool support to help lower software development and maintenance costs, and improve software users' everyday experience through faster and more reliable software on a wide spectrum of platforms.

在所有类型的软件错误中，多线程并行程序中的并发错误特别麻烦。由于多核机器的普遍性，它们在广泛存在，并且变得越来越严重。检测并发错误的现有方法主要是在并发程序中多个线程之间的不确定性互动的复杂原因而苦苦挣扎。本项目旨在通过面向效应的方法来解决并发错误问题。具体而言，它将提供（1）特征研究和对现实并发错误的错误传播过程的深入了解； （2）以效应为导向的错误检测和测试框架，该框架可以识别程序中的潜在故障并搜索通过向后分析导致这些故障的并发错误； （3）一个利用上面确定的错误传播信息并向软件开发人员建议补丁的错误固定工具； （4）一种以效应为导向的理念，可以指导与多线程并行程序相关的其他工具。这项研究将提高我们对并发软件的可靠性问题的理解，提供大量的工具支持，以帮助降低软件开发和维护成本，并通过在各种平台上更快，更可靠的软件来改善软件用户的日常体验。