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

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bug中，多线程并行程序中的并发bug尤其麻烦。由于多核机器的普遍存在，它们广泛存在并且变得越来越严重。现有的检测并发错误的方法大多都在解决并发错误的复杂原因——并发程序中多个线程之间的非确定性交互。本项目旨在通过面向效果的方法来解决并发错误问题。具体来说，它将提供（1）对现实世界并发错误的特征研究和错误传播过程的深入理解； （2）面向效果的错误检测和测试框架，可以识别程序中潜在的故障，并通过向后分析查找导致这些故障的并发错误； (3) 错误修复工具，利用上述错误传播信息并向软件开发人员建议补丁； (4) 一种以效果为导向的通用理念，可以指导与多线程并行程序相关的其他工具。这项研究将增进我们对并发软件可靠性问题的理解，提供实质性的工具支持，帮助降低软件开发和维护成本，并通过在广泛的平台上提供更快、更可靠的软件来改善软件用户的日常体验。