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A software instruction counter

Authors:

J. M. Mellor-Crummey,

T. J. LeBlancAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News, Volume 17, Issue 2

Pages 78 - 86

https://doi.org/10.1145/68182.68189

Published: 01 April 1989 Publication History

Abstract

Although several recent papers have proposed architectural support for program debugging and profiling, most processors do not yet provide even basic facilities, such as an instruction counter. As a result, system developers have been forced to invent software solutions. This paper describes our implementation of a software instruction counter for program debugging. We show that an instruction counter can be reasonably implemented in software, often with less than 10% execution overhead. Our experience suggests that a hardware instruction counter is not necessary for a practical implementation of watch-points and reverse execution, however it will make program instrumentation much easier for the system developer.

References

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Digital Equipment Corporation. VAX Architecture Handbook. Digital Equipment Corporation, Maynard, MA, 1981.

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I. J. P. Elshoff. A distributed debugger for Amoeba. In Proc. of the $IGPLAN/$IGOP$ Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Debugging, pages 1-10, Madison, WI, May 1988.

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R. Fowler, T. LeBlanc, and J. Mellor-Crummey. An integrated approach to parallel program debugging and performance analysis on largescale multiprocessors. In Proc. of the SIG- PLAN/$IGOP$ Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Debugging, pages 163-173, Madison, WI, May 1988.

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T. J. LeBlanc and J. M. Mellor-Crummey. Debugging parallel programs with Instant Replay. {EEE Transactions on Computers, C-36(4):471- 482, Apr. 1987.

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Cited By

Basu NMontanari CEriksson JFreund SYahav E(2021)Frequent background polling on a shared thread, using light-weight compiler interruptsProceedings of the 42nd ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation10.1145/3453483.3454107(1249-1263)Online publication date: 19-Jun-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3453483.3454107
Prahofer HSchatz RWirth CMossenbock H(2011)A Comprehensive Solution for Deterministic Replay Debugging of SoftPLC ApplicationsIEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics10.1109/TII.2011.21667687:4(641-651)Online publication date: Nov-2011
https://doi.org/10.1109/TII.2011.2166768
Prahofer HSchatz RWirth CMossenbock H(2010)Deterministic Replay Debugging of IEC 61131-3 SoftPLC programs2010 8th IEEE International Conference on Industrial Informatics10.1109/INDIN.2010.5549586(1110-1117)Online publication date: Jul-2010
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Index Terms

A software instruction counter
1. Computer systems organization
  1. Architectures
    1. Parallel architectures
      1. Multiple instruction, multiple data
      2. Very long instruction word
    2. Serial architectures
      1. Complex instruction set computing
      2. Reduced instruction set computing
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software verification and validation
      1. Software defect analysis
        Software testing and debugging

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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News

ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News Volume 17, Issue 2

Special issue: Proceedings of ASPLOS-III: the third international conference on architecture support for programming languages and operating systems

April 1989

291 pages

ISSN:0163-5964

DOI:10.1145/68182

Editor:
Joel Emer

Issue’s Table of Contents

ASPLOS III: Proceedings of the third international conference on Architectural support for programming languages and operating systems
April 1989
303 pages
ISBN:0897913000
DOI:10.1145/70082
Chairman:
Joel Emer,
General Chair:
John Hennessy
Stanford University

Copyright © 1989 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 April 1989

Published in SIGARCH Volume 17, Issue 2

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Cited By

Basu NMontanari CEriksson JFreund SYahav E(2021)Frequent background polling on a shared thread, using light-weight compiler interruptsProceedings of the 42nd ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation10.1145/3453483.3454107(1249-1263)Online publication date: 19-Jun-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3453483.3454107
Prahofer HSchatz RWirth CMossenbock H(2011)A Comprehensive Solution for Deterministic Replay Debugging of SoftPLC ApplicationsIEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics10.1109/TII.2011.21667687:4(641-651)Online publication date: Nov-2011
https://doi.org/10.1109/TII.2011.2166768
Prahofer HSchatz RWirth CMossenbock H(2010)Deterministic Replay Debugging of IEC 61131-3 SoftPLC programs2010 8th IEEE International Conference on Industrial Informatics10.1109/INDIN.2010.5549586(1110-1117)Online publication date: Jul-2010
https://doi.org/10.1109/INDIN.2010.5549586
Skinner EEdge KAltman JSherwood H(2003)Searching for the structure of coping: A review and critique of category systems for classifying ways of coping.Psychological Bulletin10.1037/0033-2909.129.2.216129:2(216-269)Online publication date: Mar-2003
https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.129.2.216
Harris TMuller GJul E(2002)Dependable software needs pervasive debuggingProceedings of the 10th workshop on ACM SIGOPS European workshop10.1145/1133373.1133380(38-43)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2002
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1133373.1133380
Ball T(1994)Efficiently counting program events with support for on-line queriesACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems10.1145/186025.18602716:5(1399-1410)Online publication date: 1-Sep-1994
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/186025.186027
Chen LWu DMa WZhou YXu BLeung H(2020)How C++ Templates Are Used for Generic ProgrammingACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/335657929:1(1-49)Online publication date: 30-Jan-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3356579
El-Hokayem AFalcone Y(2020)On the Monitoring of Decentralized SpecificationsACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/335518129:1(1-57)Online publication date: 30-Jan-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3355181
Shen YHeiser GElphinstone K(2019)Fault Tolerance Through Redundant Execution on COTS Multicores: Exploring Trade-Offs2019 49th Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN)10.1109/DSN.2019.00031(188-200)Online publication date: Jun-2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/DSN.2019.00031
Treffer AUflacker M(2017)Back-in-Time Debugging in Heterogeneous Software Stacks2017 IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering Workshops (ISSREW)10.1109/ISSREW.2017.62(183-190)Online publication date: Oct-2017
https://doi.org/10.1109/ISSREW.2017.62
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