SHF: Small: RUI: Characterizing, Detecting, and Fixing Performance Bugs That Have Non-Intrusive Fixes

软件性能是软件项目成功的关键。 性能错误是指会降低执行速度的编程错误。 许多最近的技术已经被提出来检测各种性能错误。 然而，仍然有许多性能缺陷不能被现有技术检测到。 此外，性能bug的关键和实际方面还没有得到应有的关注：开发人员修复检测到的性能bug的可能性有多大？为了显著提高软件性能，该项目将开发一套新颖的技术，重点关注一类很可能由开发人员修复的性能错误，特别是那些具有非侵入性修复的性能错误。 具有非侵入性修复的性能错误很可能由开发人员修复，因为修复的好处（即，代码加速）显然超过了修复的缺点（例如，引入新的正确性错误、破坏良好的软件工程实践、开发时间和防御等）。 这个项目将解决三个基本的挑战：（1）哪些性能错误有非侵入性修复，它们的定义特征是什么？ (2)如何自动检测性能bug，以及如何确定它们的修复将是非侵入性的？ （3）如何自动修复一些检测到的性能错误？ 这项工作将拓宽我们对软件性能的一个未充分研究但很重要的方面的理解，并将提供自动化的解决方案来提高软件性能。

Software performance is critical for the success of a softwareproject. Performance bugs are programming errors that slow downexecution. Many recent techniques have been proposed to detectvarious performance bugs. However, there are still many performancebugs that cannot be detected by existing techniques. Furthermore, acrucial and practical aspect of performance bugs has not received theattention it deserves: How likely are developers to fix a detectedperformance bug?To significantly improve software performance, this project willdevelop a set of novel techniques that focus on a class of performancebugs that are very likely to be fixed by developers, specifically onperformance bugs that have non-intrusive fixes. Performance bugs thathave non-intrusive fixes are very likely to be fixed by developersbecause the benefits of the fix (i.e., code speedup) clearly outweighthe drawbacks of the fix (e.g., introducing new correctness bugs,breaking good software engineering practices, development time andeffort, etc). This project will address three fundamental challenges:(1) What performance bugs have non-intrusive fixes and what are theirdefining characteristics? (2) How to automatically detect performancebugs and how to establish that their fixes will be non-intrusive? (3)How to automatically fix some of the detected performance bugs? Thiswork will broaden our understanding of an understudied yet importantaspect of software performance and will provide automated solutions toimprove software performance.