High-level debugging in parasight

ABSTRACT

Debugging parallel programs with time critical dependencies is difficult due to subtle race conditions that may cause deadlock, starvation, and other errors. These errors can be detected by multiple instrumentation points triggered by logical assertions. Although some advanced debuggers provide a programmer with the ability to define complex logical assertions, they are inadequate for debugging parallel programs due to the high overhead of monitoring these assertions. This paper describes the facilities for high-level debugging in Parasight™ a parallel programming environment. In Parasight, high-level debugging facilities are implemented as separate programs that are linked dynamically to a target program. The target program is controlled by attaching these debugging programs to light-weight instrumentation points that are dynamically inserted and deleted. Different facilities of arbitrary complexity may be created to support high-level debugging. Parasight has been implemented on Multimax™ a shared-memory multiprocessor. It has been used for debugging and profiling “C” programs.

REFERENCES

• 1: AT&T UN/X System V Support Tools Guide. Chapter 8. COFF- The Common Object File Format.
• 2: Ziya Aral , Ilya Gertner, Non-intrusive and interactive profiling in parasight, Proceedings of the ACM/SIGPLAN conference on Parallel programming: experience with applications, languages and systems, p.21-30, July 19-21, 1988, New Haven, Connecticut, United States
• 3: E Adams , S S Muchnick, Dbxtool: A window-based symbolic debugger for sun workstations, Software—Practice & Experience, v.16 n.7, p.653-669, July. 1986 [doi>10.1002/spe.4380160705]
• 4: Bell C.G., "Multi: A New Class of Multiprocessor Computers", Science, Vol. 228, April, 1985.
• 5: Encore Computer Corporation, "CDB User's Manual", Marlborough, MA 1752-3004.
• 6: Doeppner T.W., "Threads - A System for the Support of Concurrent Programming", Computer Science Technical Report CS-87-11, Brown University, June, 1987.
• 7: VAX/VMS Source-level Debugger, Reference Manual, Digital Equipment Corporation, Maynard, MA 01652
• 8: Encore Computer Corporation., "UMAX 4.2 Programmer's Reference Manual", Marlborough,MA 01752-3004.
• 9: Feldman S.I., "Make- a Program for Managing Computer Programs", Software-Practice and Experience, 1977.
• 10: Susan L. Graham , Peter B. Kessler , Marshall K. Mckusick, Gprof: A call graph execution profiler, Proceedings of the 1982 SIGPLAN symposium on Compiler construction, p.120-126, June 23-25, 1982, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
• 11: T. J. LeBlanc , J. M. Mellor-Crummey, Debugging parallel programs with instant replay, IEEE Transactions on Computers, v.36 n.4, p.471-482, April 1987 [doi>10.1109/TC.1987.1676929]
• 12: Alan H. Karp, Programming for parallelism, Computer, v.20 n.5, p.43-57, May 1987 [doi>10.1109/MC.1987.1663563]
• 13: McKusick M.K., K~els M.J., and Bloom J.M. (editors), "UNIX Programmers' Manual, 4.3 Berkley Software Distribution," University of California, Berkley, April 1986.
• 14: Nassi I.R, "A Preliminary Report on the Ultramax: A Massively Parallel Shared Memory Multiprocessor", DARPA Workshop on Parallel Architectures for Mathematical and Scientific Computing, July 1, 1987.
• 15: Rashid F.R., "Threads of a New System", UNIX Review, August, 1986.
• 16: S. P. Reiss, A conceptual programming environment, Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Software Engineering, p.225-235, March 1987, Monterey, California, United States
• 17: Segall Z. and Gregoretti F. "Programming for Observability Support in a Parallel Programming Environment", Tech. Report CMU-CS-85-176, Department of Computer Science, CMU, November, 1985.
• 18: Segall Z. Rudolph L. "Pie: A Programming and Instrumentation Environment for Parallel Processing", IEEE Software, November, 1985.
• 19: Wilson D., "ParaUelization of Event Driven Simulator on the Encore Multimax",Encore ETR-No. 886-005.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.5 Testing and Debugging
          Subjects: Debugging aids

Additional Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.1 PROCESSOR ARCHITECTURES
      C.1.2 Multiple Data Stream Architectures (Multiprocessors)
          Subjects: Parallel processors**

General Terms:
Algorithms