UNICORN: a unified approach for localizing non‐deadlock concurrency bugs1. (9th March 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Park, Sangmin; Vuduc, Richard; Harrold, Mary Jean; Farchi, Eitan; Hierons, Robert M.; Lourenço, João
• Is Part Of: Software testing, verification & reliability. Volume 25:Number 3(2015:Jul.)
• Page Start: 167
• Page End: 190
• Publication Date: 2014-03-09
• Subjects: Computer software -- Testing -- Periodicals; Computer software -- Verification -- Periodicals; Computer software -- Reliability -- Periodicals; 005.14
• DOI: 10.1002/stvr.1523
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0960-0833

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="main" id="stvr1523-abs-0001"> <title>Summary</title> <p id="stvr1523-para-0002"> <sc>UNICORN</sc> is an automated dynamic pattern‐detection‐based technique that finds and ranks problematic memory access patterns for non‐deadlock concurrency bugs. It monitors pairs of memory accesses, combines the pairs into problematic patterns and ranks the patterns by their suspiciousness scores. It detects significant classes of bug types, including order violations and both single‐variable and multivariable atomicity violations, which have been shown to be the most important classes of non‐deadlock concurrency bugs. This paper describes the <sc>UNICORN</sc> approach, its implementations in Java and C++, and evaluates these implementations empirically. The evaluation shows that <sc>UNICORN</sc> can effectively compute and rank the patterns that represent concurrency bugs, and perform computation and ranking with reasonable efficiency. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.</p> </abstract>