Using hardware transactional memory for data race detection

Abstract—Widespread emergence of multicore processors will spur development of parallel applications, exposing programmers to degrees of hardware concurrency hitherto unavailable. Dependable multithreaded software will have to rely on the ability to dynamically detect nondeterministic and notoriously hard to reproduce synchronization bugs manifested through data races. Previous solutions to dynamic data race detection have required specialized hardware, at additional power, design and area costs. We propose RaceTM, a novel approach to data race detection that exploits hardware that will likely be present in future multiprocessors, albeit for a different purpose. In particular, we show how emerging hardware support for transactional memory can be leveraged to aid data race detection. We propose the concept of lightweight debug transactions that exploit the conflict detection mechanisms of transactional memory systems to perform data race detection. We present a proof-of-concept simul...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: IPPS
• Authors: Shantanu Gupta, Florin Sultan, Srihari Cadambi, Franjo Ivancic, Martin Rötteler
• Keywords: Data Race Detection, Data Races, Distributed And Parallel Computing, Dynamic Data Race, IPPS 2009