Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Portability Analysis for Weak Memory Models porthos: One Tool for all Models

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Static Analysis (SAS 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 10422))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

We present porthos, the first tool that discovers porting bugs in performance-critical code. porthos takes as input a program and the memory models of the source architecture for which the program has been developed and the target model to which it is ported. If the code is not portable, porthos finds a bug in the form of an unexpected execution — an execution that is consistent with the target but inconsistent with the source memory model. Technically, porthos implements a bounded model checking method that reduces the portability analysis problem to satisfiability modulo theories (SMT). There are two main problems in the reduction that we present novel and efficient solutions for. First, the formulation of the portability problem contains a quantifier alternation (consistent + inconsistent). We introduce a formula that encodes both in a single existential query. Second, the supported memory models (e.g., Power) contain recursive definitions. We compute the required least fixed point semantics for recursion (a problem that was left open in [48]) efficiently in SMT. Finally we present the first experimental analysis of portability from TSO to Power.

This work was carried out when Hernán Ponce-de-León and Roland Meyer were at Aalto University.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Notice that all memory models considered in [8] and in this paper are common ones.

References

  1. Abdulla, P.A., Aronis, S., Atig, M.F., Jonsson, B., Leonardsson, C., Sagonas, K.: Stateless Model Checking for TSO and PSO. In: Baier, C., Tinelli, C. (eds.) TACAS 2015. LNCS, vol. 9035, pp. 353–367. Springer, Heidelberg (2015). doi:10.1007/978-3-662-46681-0_28

    Google Scholar 

  2. Abdulla, P.A., Atig, M.F., Jonsson, B., Leonardsson, C.: Stateless model checking for POWER. In: Chaudhuri, S., Farzan, A. (eds.) CAV 2016. LNCS, vol. 9780, pp. 134–156. Springer, Cham (2016). doi:10.1007/978-3-319-41540-6_8

    Google Scholar 

  3. Alglave, J.: A Shared Memory Poetics. Thèse de doctorat, L’université Paris Denis Diderot (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Alglave, J., Cousot, P., Maranget, L.: Syntax and semantics of the weak consistency model specification language CAT. CoRR (2016). abs/1608.07531

    Google Scholar 

  5. Alglave, J., Kroening, D., Nimal, V., Poetzl, D.: Don’t sit on the fence—a static analysis approach to automatic fence insertion. In: CAV, LNCS, vol. 8559, pp. 508–524. Springer, Vienna (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Alglave, J., Kroening, D., Tautschnig, M.: Partial orders for efficient bounded model checking of concurrent software. In: CAV, LNCS, vol. 8044, pp. 141–157. Springer, Saint Petersburg (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Alglave, J., Maranget, L.: Stability in weak memory models. In: Gopalakrishnan, G., Qadeer, S. (eds.) CAV 2011. LNCS, vol. 6806, pp. 50–66. Springer, Heidelberg (2011). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-22110-1_6

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  8. Alglave, J., Maranget, L., Tautschnig, M.: Herding cats: Modelling, simulation, testing, and data mining for weak memory. ACM Trans. Program. Lang. Syst. 36(2), 7:1–7:74 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Atig, M.F., Bouajjani, A., Burckhardt, S., Musuvathi, M.: On the verification problem for weak memory models. In: POPL, pp. 7–18. ACM, Madrid (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Batty, M., Donaldson, A.F., Wickerson, J.: Overhauling SC atomics in C11 and OpenCL. In: POPL, pp. 634–648. ACM, St. Petersburg (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Batty, M., Owens, S., Sarkar, S., Sewell, P., Weber, T.: Mathematizing C++ concurrency. In: POPL, pp. 55–66. ACM, Austin (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Bouajjani, A., Derevenetc, E., Meyer, R.: Checking and enforcing robustness against TSO. In: Felleisen, M., Gardner, P. (eds.) ESOP 2013. LNCS, vol. 7792, pp. 533–553. Springer, Heidelberg (2013). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-37036-6_29

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  13. Burckhardt, S., Alur, R., Martin, M.M.K.: CheckFence: checking consistency of concurrent data types on relaxed memory models. In: PLDI, pp. 12–21. ACM, San Diego (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Burckhardt, S., Musuvathi, M.: Effective program verification for relaxed memory models. In: Gupta, A., Malik, S. (eds.) CAV 2008. LNCS, vol. 5123, pp. 107–120. Springer, Heidelberg (2008). doi:10.1007/978-3-540-70545-1_12

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  15. Burns, J.E., Lynch, N.A.: Bounds on shared memory for mutual exclusion. Inf. Comput. 107(2), 171–184 (1993)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  16. Cantin, J.F., Lipasti, M.H., Smith, J.E.: The complexity of verifying memory coherence and consistency. IEEE Trans. Parallel Distrib. Syst. 16(7), 663–671 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Collavizza, H., Rueher, M.: Exploration of the capabilities of constraint programming for software verification. In: Hermanns, H., Palsberg, J. (eds.) TACAS 2006. LNCS, vol. 3920, pp. 182–196. Springer, Heidelberg (2006). doi:10.1007/11691372_12

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  18. Collier, W.W.: Reasoning About Parallel Architectures. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River (1992)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  19. Cotton, S., Asarin, E., Maler, O., Niebert, P.: Some progress in satisfiability checking for difference logic. In: Lakhnech, Y., Yovine, S. (eds.) FORMATS/FTRTFT -2004. LNCS, vol. 3253, pp. 263–276. Springer, Heidelberg (2004). doi:10.1007/978-3-540-30206-3_19

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  20. Dan, A.M., Meshman, Y., Vechev, M., Yahav, E.: Predicate abstraction for relaxed memory models. In: Logozzo, F., Fähndrich, M. (eds.) SAS 2013. LNCS, vol. 7935, pp. 84–104. Springer, Heidelberg (2013). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-38856-9_7

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  21. Dan, A.M., Yuri, M., Yahav, M.T., Eran, Y.: Effective abstractions for verification under relaxed memory models. In: D ’Souza, D., Lal, A., Larsen, K.G. (eds.) VMCAI 2015. LNCS, vol. 8931, pp. 449–466. Springer, Heidelberg (2015). doi:10.1007/978-3-662-46081-8_25

  22. Derevenetc, E., Meyer, R.: Robustness against power is PSpace-complete. In: Esparza, J., Fraigniaud, P., Husfeldt, T., Koutsoupias, E. (eds.) ICALP 2014. LNCS, vol. 8573, pp. 158–170. Springer, Heidelberg (2014). doi:10.1007/978-3-662-43951-7_14

    Google Scholar 

  23. Dijkstra, E.W.: Cooperating sequential processes. In: The Origin of Concurrent Programming, pp. 65–138. Springer, New York (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Enea, C., Farzan, A.: On atomicity in presence of non-atomic writes. In: Chechik, M., Raskin, J.-F. (eds.) TACAS 2016. LNCS, vol. 9636, pp. 497–514. Springer, Heidelberg (2016). doi:10.1007/978-3-662-49674-9_29

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  25. Farzan, A., Madhusudan, P.: Monitoring atomicity in concurrent programs. In: Gupta, A., Malik, S. (eds.) CAV 2008. LNCS, vol. 5123, pp. 52–65. Springer, Heidelberg (2008). doi:10.1007/978-3-540-70545-1_8

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  26. Flur, S., Gray, K.E., Pulte, C., Sarkar, S., Sezgin, A., Maranget, L., Deacon, W., Sewell, P.: Modelling the ARMv8 architecture, operationally: concurrency and ISA. In: POPL, pp. 608–621. ACM, St. Petersburg (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Furbach, F., Meyer, R., Schneider, K., Senftleben, M.: Memory-model-aware testing: a unified complexity analysis. ACM Trans. Embedded Comput. Syst. 14(4), 63 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Gebser, M., Janhunen, T., Rintanen, J.: SAT modulo graphs: Acyclicity. In: Fermé, E., Leite, J. (eds.) JELIA 2014. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 8761, pp. 137–151. Springer, Cham (2014). doi:10.1007/978-3-319-11558-0_10

    Google Scholar 

  29. Gibbons, P.B., Korach, E.: Testing shared memories. SIAM J. Comput. 26, 1208–1244 (1997)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  30. Heljanko, K., Keinänen, M., Lange, M., Niemelä, I.: Solving parity games by a reduction to SAT. J. Comput. Syst. Sci. 78(2), 430–440 (2012)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  31. Kuperstein, M., Vechev, M.T., Yahav, E.: Automatic inference of memory fences. SIGACT News 43(2), 108–123 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Lamport, L.: A new solution of Dijkstra’s concurrent programming problem. Commun. ACM 17(8), 453–455 (1974)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  33. Lamport, L.: A fast mutual exclusion algorithm. ACM Trans. Comput. Syst. 5(1), 1–11 (1987)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Liu, F., Nedev, N., Prisadnikov, N., Vechev, M.T., Yahav, E.: Dynamic synthesis for relaxed memory models. In: PLDI, pp. 429–440. ACM, Beijing (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  35. Mador-Haim, S., Alur, R., Martin, M.M.K.: Generating litmus tests for contrasting memory consistency models. In: Touili, T., Cook, B., Jackson, P. (eds.) CAV 2010. LNCS, vol. 6174, pp. 273–287. Springer, Heidelberg (2010). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-14295-6_26

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  36. Mador-Haim, S., Maranget, L., Sarkar, S., Memarian, K., Alglave, J., Owens, S., Alur, R., Martin, M.M.K., Sewell, P., Williams, D.: An axiomatic memory model for POWER multiprocessors. In: Madhusudan, P., Seshia, S.A. (eds.) CAV 2012. LNCS, vol. 7358, pp. 495–512. Springer, Heidelberg (2012). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-31424-7_36

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  37. Peterson, G.L.: Myths about the mutual exclusion problem. Inf. Process. Lett. 12(3), 115–116 (1981)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  38. Ponce de León, H., Furbach, F., Heljanko, K., Meyer, R.: Portability analysis for axiomatic memory models. PORTHOS: One tool for all models. CoRR (2017). abs/1702.06704

    Google Scholar 

  39. Rice, H.G.: Classes of recursively enumerable sets and their decision problems. Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 74(2), 358–366 (1953)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  40. Sarkar, S., Sewell, P., Alglave, J., Maranget, L., Williams, D.: Understanding POWER multiprocessors. In: PLDI, pp. 175–186. ACM, San Jose (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  41. Sarkar, S., Sewell, P., Nardelli, F.Z., Owens, S., Ridge, T., Braibant, T., Myreen, M.O, Alglave, J.: The semantics of x86-CC multiprocessor machine code. In: POPL, pp. 379–391. ACM, Savannah (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  42. Stockmeyer, L.J.: The polynomial-time hierarchy. Theor. Comput. Sci. 3(1), 1–22 (1976)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  43. Stoltenberg-Hansen, V., Griffor, E.R., Lindstrom, I.: Mathematical Theory of Domains. Cambridge Tracts in Theoretical Computer Science. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1994)

    Book  MATH  Google Scholar 

  44. Szymanski, B.K.: A simple solution to Lamport’s concurrent programming problem with linear wait. In: ICS, pp. 621–626. ACM, Saint Malo (1988)

    Google Scholar 

  45. Torlak, E., Vaziri, M., Dolby, J.: MemSAT: Checking axiomatic specifications of memory models. In: PLDI, pp. 341–350. ACM, Toronto (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  46. Turon, A., Vafeiadis, V., Dreyer, D.: GPS: Navigating weak memory with ghosts, protocols, and separation. In: OOPSLA, pp. 691–707. ACM, Portland (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  47. Vafeiadis, V., Narayan, C.: Relaxed separation logic: A program logic for C11 concurrency. In: OOPSLA, pp. 867–884. ACM, Indianapolis (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  48. Wickerson, J., Batty, M., Sorensen, T., Constantinides, G.A.: Automatically comparing memory consistency models. In: POPL, pp. 190–204. ACM, Paris (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  49. Yang, Y., Gopalakrishnan, G., Lindstrom, G., Slind, K.: Nemos: A framework for axiomatic and executable specifications of memory consistency models. IEEE Computer Society, In: IPDPS (2004)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank John Wickerson for his explanations about dead executions, Luc Maranget for several discussions about CAT models, and Egor Derevenetc for providing help with the mutual exclusion benchmarks. This work has been partially developed under contracting of Liebherr Aerospace Lindenberg GmbH and supported by the Academy of Finland project 277522. Florian Furbach was supported by the DFG project R2M2: Robustness against Relaxed Memory Models.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. fortiss GmbH, München, Germany

    Hernán Ponce-de-León

  2. TU Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern, Germany

    Florian Furbach

  3. Aalto University and HIIT, Espoo, Finland

    Keijo Heljanko

  4. TU Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany

    Roland Meyer

Authors
  1. Hernán Ponce-de-León
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Florian Furbach
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Keijo Heljanko
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Roland Meyer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hernán Ponce-de-León .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Matematica, University of Padova, Padua, Italy

    Francesco Ranzato

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG

About this paper

Cite this paper

Ponce-de-León, H., Furbach, F., Heljanko, K., Meyer, R. (2017). Portability Analysis for Weak Memory Models porthos: One Tool for all Models . In: Ranzato, F. (eds) Static Analysis. SAS 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10422. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66706-5_15

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66706-5_15

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-66705-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-66706-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation