Testing patterns for software transactional memory engines

ABSTRACT

The emergence of multi-core processors is promoting the use of concurrency and multithreading. To raise the abstraction level of synchronization constructs is fundamental to ease the development of concurrent software, and Software Transactional Memory (STM) is a good approach towards such goal. However, execution environment issues such as the processor instruction set, caching policy, and memory model, may have strong influence upon the reliability of STM engines. This paper addresses the testing of STM engines aiming at improving their reliability and independence from execution environment. From our experience with porting and extending a specific STM engine, we report on some of the bugs found and synthesize some testing patterns that proved to be useful at testing STM engines.

References

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Index Terms

• Computing methodologies

  • Parallel computing methodologies

    • Parallel programming languages

• Software and its engineering

  • Software creation and management

    • Software verification and validation

  • Software notations and tools

    • General programming languages

      • Language types

        • Parallel programming languages

  • Software organization and properties

    • Contextual software domains

      • Operating systems

        • Process management

          • Process synchronization