research-article

Input-covering schedules for multithreaded programs

Authors:

Dan GrossmanAuthors Info & Claims

OOPSLA '13: Proceedings of the 2013 ACM SIGPLAN international conference on Object oriented programming systems languages & applications

Pages 677 - 692

https://doi.org/10.1145/2509136.2509508

Published: 29 October 2013 Publication History

Abstract

We propose constraining multithreaded execution to small sets of input-covering schedules, which we define as follows: given a program P, we say that a set of schedules ∑ covers all inputs of program P if, when given any input, P's execution can be constrained to some schedule in ∑ and still produce a semantically valid result.

Our approach is to first compute a small ∑ for a given program P, and then, at runtime, constrain P's execution to always follow some schedule in ∑, and never deviate. We have designed an algorithm that uses symbolic execution to systematically enumerate a set of input-covering schedules, ∑. To deal with programs that run for an unbounded length of time, we partition execution into bounded epochs, find input-covering schedules for each epoch in isolation, and then piece the schedules together at runtime. We have implemented this algorithm along with a constrained execution runtime for pthreads programs, and we report results

Our approach has the following advantage: because all possible runtime schedules are known a priori, we can seek to validate the program by thoroughly verifying each schedule in ∑, in isolation, without needing to reason about the huge space of thread interleavings that arises due to conventional nondeterministic execution.

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Cited By

Dong ZTiwari AYu XRoychoudhury ASpinellis DGousios GChechik MDi Penta M(2021)Flaky test detection in Android via event order explorationProceedings of the 29th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3468264.3468584(367-378)Online publication date: 20-Aug-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3468264.3468584
Yin LDong WLiu WWang J(2020)On Scheduling Constraint Abstraction for Multi-Threaded Program VerificationIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2018.286412246:5(549-565)Online publication date: 1-May-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2018.2864122
Metzler PSuri NWeissenbacher G(2020)Extracting safe thread schedules from incomplete model checking resultsInternational Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer (STTT)10.1007/s10009-020-00575-y22:5(565-581)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10009-020-00575-y
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Index Terms

Input-covering schedules for multithreaded programs
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Concurrent computing methodologies
    1. Concurrent programming languages
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. Compilers
      1. Runtime environments
    2. General programming languages
      1. Language types
        Concurrent programming languages

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cover image ACM Conferences

OOPSLA '13: Proceedings of the 2013 ACM SIGPLAN international conference on Object oriented programming systems languages & applications

October 2013

904 pages

ISBN:9781450323741

DOI:10.1145/2509136

Co-chair:
Antony Hosking
Purdue University, USA
,
General Chair:
Patrick Eugster
Purdue University, USA
,
Program Chair:
Cristina V. Lopes
University of California, Irvine, USA

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 48, Issue 10
OOPSLA '13
October 2013
867 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/2544173
Editor:
Mark W. Bailey
Hamilton College, Clinton, NY
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2013 ACM.

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Published: 29 October 2013

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SPLASH '13: Conference on Systems, Programming, and Applications: Software for Humanity

October 29 - 31, 2013

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OOPSLA '13 Paper Acceptance Rate 50 of 189 submissions, 26%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 268 of 1,244 submissions, 22%

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3468264.3468584
Yin LDong WLiu WWang J(2020)On Scheduling Constraint Abstraction for Multi-Threaded Program VerificationIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2018.286412246:5(549-565)Online publication date: 1-May-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2018.2864122
Metzler PSuri NWeissenbacher G(2020)Extracting safe thread schedules from incomplete model checking resultsInternational Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer (STTT)10.1007/s10009-020-00575-y22:5(565-581)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10009-020-00575-y
Yin LDong WLiu WWang JHuchard MKästner CFraser G(2018)Scheduling constraint based abstraction refinement for weak memory modelsProceedings of the 33rd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1145/3238147.3238223(645-655)Online publication date: 3-Sep-2018
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Yi QHuang JLeavens GGarcia APăsăreanu C(2018)Concurrency verification with maximal path causalityProceedings of the 2018 26th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3236024.3236048(366-376)Online publication date: 26-Oct-2018
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Yoga ANagarakatte SGupta AZimmermann TCleland-Huang JSu Z(2016)Parallel data race detection for task parallel programs with locksProceedings of the 2016 24th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/2950290.2950329(833-845)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2016
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Merrifield TDevietti JEriksson JR�veill�re LHarris THerlihy M(2015)High-performance determinism with total store order consistencyProceedings of the Tenth European Conference on Computer Systems10.1145/2741948.2741960(1-13)Online publication date: 17-Apr-2015
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Yue HWu PChen TLv Y(2015)Input-Driven Active Testing of Multi-threaded Programs2015 Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference (APSEC)10.1109/APSEC.2015.34(246-253)Online publication date: Dec-2015
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