research-article

Convoider: A Concurrency Bug Avoider Based on Transparent Software Transactional Memory

Authors:

Yong ZhaoAuthors Info & Claims

International Journal of Parallel Programming, Volume 48, Issue 1

Pages 32 - 60

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10766-019-00642-1

Published: 01 February 2020 Publication History

Abstract

Software transactional memory is an effective mechanism to avoid concurrency bugs in multi-threaded programs. However, two problems hinder the adoption of traditional such systems in wild world: high human cost for equipping programs with transaction functionality and low compatibility with I/O calls and conditional variables. This paper presents Convoider to try to solve these problems. By intercepting inter-thread operations and designating code among them as transactions in each thread, Convoider automatically transactionalizes target programs without any source code modification and recompiling. By saving/restoring stack frames and CPU registers on beginning/aborting a transaction, Convoider makes execution flow revocable. By turning threads into processes, leveraging virtual memory protection and customizing memory allocation/deallocation, Convoider makes memory manipulations revocable. By maintaining virtual file systems and redirecting I/O operations onto them, Convoider makes I/O effects revocable. By converting lock/unlock operations to no-ops, customizing signal/wait operations on condition variables and committing memory changes transactionally, Convoider makes deadlocks, data races and atomicity violations impossible. Experimental results show that Convoider succeeds in transparently transactionalizing twelve real-world applications and perfectly avoid 94% of thirty-one concurrency bugs used in our experiments. This study can help efficiently transactionalize legacy multi-threaded applications and effectively improve the runtime reliability of them.

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Cited By

Hoseinzadeh MSwanson SSherwood TBerger EKozyrakis C(2021)Corundum: statically-enforced persistent memory safetyProceedings of the 26th ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems10.1145/3445814.3446710(429-442)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3445814.3446710
Pasqualin DDiener MDu Bois APilla M(2020)Characterizing the Sharing Behavior of Applications Using Software Transactional MemoryBenchmarking, Measuring, and Optimizing10.1007/978-3-030-71058-3_1(3-21)Online publication date: 15-Nov-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-030-71058-3_1

Index Terms

Convoider: A Concurrency Bug Avoider Based on Transparent Software Transactional Memory
1. Software and its engineering

Index terms have been assigned to the content through auto-classification.

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cover image International Journal of Parallel Programming

International Journal of Parallel Programming Volume 48, Issue 1

Feb 2020

156 pages

ISSN:0885-7458

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© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019.

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Kluwer Academic Publishers

United States

Publication History

Published: 01 February 2020

Accepted: 28 August 2019

Received: 10 August 2018

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Cited By

Hoseinzadeh MSwanson SSherwood TBerger EKozyrakis C(2021)Corundum: statically-enforced persistent memory safetyProceedings of the 26th ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems10.1145/3445814.3446710(429-442)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3445814.3446710
Pasqualin DDiener MDu Bois APilla M(2020)Characterizing the Sharing Behavior of Applications Using Software Transactional MemoryBenchmarking, Measuring, and Optimizing10.1007/978-3-030-71058-3_1(3-21)Online publication date: 15-Nov-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-030-71058-3_1

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