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High Performance Computing Systems and Applications pp 49–63Cite as

A Testing Strategy for Nondeterministic Message Passing Programs

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Part of the The International Series in Engineering and Computer Science book series (SECS,volume 541)

Abstract

Testing and debugging of parallel programs is difficult, because apart from all errors of sequential code inconvenient effects from communication and synchronization may occur. Some common problems are connected with nondeterminism, where different results are obtained in successive program runs even if the same input data are applied. In that case, users are confronted with the irreproducibility effect, the completeness problem, and the probe effect. Furthermore, exhaustive testing is almost impossible due to the required resources and the number of executions. Therefore strategies have to be developed to support users in managing nondeterministic test case scenarios. The automatic nondeterminism tester ANT offers a solution by combining monitor overhead removal, race condition detection, and automatic event manipulation. Due to limited accuracy of the overhead removal algorithm, a tolerance interval for selecting the most probable test cases is required. A side effect of this approach is significant reduction of necessary executions, which makes extensive testing feasible in many cases.

Keywords

  • Testing
  • debugging
  • nondeterminism
  • race conditions

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. GUP Linz, Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria

    Dieter Kranzlmüller, Christian Schaubschläger & Jens Volkert

Authors
  1. Dieter Kranzlmüller
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  2. Christian Schaubschläger
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  3. Jens Volkert
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

    Andrew Pollard

  2. Department of Psychology, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

    Douglas J. K. Mewhort

  3. Department of Chemistry, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

    Donald F. Weaver

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© 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers

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Kranzlmüller, D., Schaubschläger, C., Volkert, J. (2002). A Testing Strategy for Nondeterministic Message Passing Programs. In: Pollard, A., Mewhort, D.J.K., Weaver, D.F. (eds) High Performance Computing Systems and Applications. The International Series in Engineering and Computer Science, vol 541. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-47015-2_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-47015-2_10

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-7923-7774-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-0-306-47015-8

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