Atomizer: a dynamic atomicity checker for multithreaded programs

Ensuring the correctness of multithreaded programs is difficult, due to the potential for unexpected interactions between concurrent threads. Much previous work has focused on detecting race conditions, but the absence of race conditions does not by itself prevent undesired thread interactions. We focus on the more fundamental non-interference property of atomicity; a method is atomic if its execution is not affected by and does not interfere with concurrentlyexecuting threads. Atomic methods can be understood according to their sequential semantics, which significantly simplifies (formal and informal) correctness arguments. This paper presents a dynamic analysis for detecting atomicity violations. This analysis combines ideas from both Lipton's theory of reduction and earlier dynamic race detectors. Experience with a prototype checker for multithreaded Java code demonstrates that this approach is effective for detecting errors due to unintended interactions between threads. In p...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: POPL
• Authors: Cormac Flanagan, Stephen N. Freund
• Keywords: Fewer False Alarms, Fundamental Non-interference Property, POPL 2004, Prevent Undesired Thread, Programming Languages