CAREER: Combating Performance Bugs in Software Systems

在主流软件中，性能错误会导致意想不到的性能下降和能源浪费。在多核时代，随着单线程性能的微薄提高和对能源效率的日益重视，这些漏洞很容易使生产软件的速度减慢几倍，并对软件质量构成越来越大的威胁。以前针对性能缺陷的工作，包括测试和分析，大多将软件视为黑盒，并且在防止性能缺陷的损害方面通常太迟或无效。这个NSF CAREER研究项目旨在开发系统和工具，采用白盒方法来解决性能错误的公开问题。首先，进行了实证研究，丰富了对现实世界中性能bug的理解。其次，它开发了能够在bug出现之前、期间和之后自动检测性能bug的工具。第三，它设计了一个测试框架，以便在软件发布之前发现性能缺陷。最后，还讨论了多线程程序中的性能错误问题。该项目的教育重点是拓宽软件课程，使学生更多地认识和练习软件的性能和正确性问题，特别是多线程软件。本研究将提高对软件中性能浪费问题的理解，提供大量的工具支持，以帮助降低软件开发和性能测试成本，并通过更快的软件改善软件用户的日常体验。它还将有助于提高生产运行软件的能源效率，并保护现场环境。

Performance bugs cause unintended performance degradation and energy waste in mainstream software. These bugs can easily slow down production software for several times and are posing increasing threat to software quality with the meager increases in single threaded performance in multi-core era and an increasing emphasis on energy efficiency.Previous works for performance bugs, including testing and profiling, mostly treat software as a black-box, and are usually too late or ineffective in preventing the damage of performance bugs. This NSF CAREER research project seeks to develop systems and tools that take a white-box approach to addressing the open problem of performance bugs. First, it conducts an empirical study to enrich the understanding of performance bugs in real-world. Second, it develops tools that can automatically detect performance bugs before, during, and after bug manifestation. Third, it designs a testing framework to expose performance bugs before software release. Finally, it also looks at the performance bug issue in multi-threaded programs.The education focus of this project is to broaden the software curriculum to bring students more awareness and exercise of performance and correctness issues in software, especially multi-threaded software.This research will improve the understanding of performance waste problem in software, provide substantial tool support to help lower software development and performance testing costs, and improve software users' everyday experience through faster software. It will also help improve the energy efficiency of production-run software and protect environment in the field.