CSR: Small: LOOM: a Language and System for Bypassing and Diagnosing Concurrency Errors

这个项目解决了多核计算的新趋势带来的编程挑战。多线程程序很难编写、测试和调试。它们通常包含许多隐蔽的并发错误，包括数据竞争、原子性违规和秩序违规，我们广泛地将其定义为竞争。之前的大量研究都集中在种族检测上。然而，在帮助开发人员修复竞争方面进展甚微，因为现有的修复竞争的系统只使用一小部分固定的竞争模式，并且在大多数情况下不能处理简单的顺序违规，这是一种常见的并发错误类型。这个项目的研究目标是Loom：一种用于绕过和诊断并发错误的语言和系统，旨在创建有效的系统和技术来帮助开发人员修复竞争。一项初步研究揭示了在修复竞争方面尚未解决的一个关键挑战，即如何帮助开发人员立即保护已部署的程序免受已知竞争的影响。即使正确诊断了竞争，在已部署的程序中修复此竞争也是复杂和耗时的。这种延迟留下了巨大的漏洞窗口，可能会危及可靠性和安全性。为了应对这些挑战，Loom项目正在创建一种直观、富有表现力的同步语言和一个名为Loom的系统，用于绕过实时程序中的竞争。该语言使开发人员能够编写声明性、简洁的执行筛选器来描述他们在代码上的同步意图。为了修复种族，织机在实时程序中安装这些过滤器，以便立即针对种族提供保护，直到软件更新可用并可以重新启动程序。该项目最大的影响将是一种新的、有效的语言和系统以及提高多线程程序可靠性的新技术，使企业、政府和个人受益。

This project addresses programming challenges posed by the new trend in multicore computing.Multithreaded programs are difficult to write, test, and debug. They often contain numerous insidious concurrency errors, including data races, atomicity violations, and order violations, which we broadly define to be races. A good deal of prior research has focused on race detection. However, little progress has been made to help developers fix races because existing systems for fixing races work only with a small, fixed set of race patterns and, for the most part, do not work with simple order violations, a common type of concurrency errors.The research objective of this project, LOOM: a Language and System for Bypassing and Diagnosing Concurrency Errors, is to create effective systems and technologies to help developers fix races. A preliminary study revealed a key challenge yet to be addressed on fixing races that is, how to help developers immediately protect deployed programs from known races. Even with the correct diagnosis of a race, fixing this race in a deployed program is complicated and time consuming. This delay leaves large vulnerability windows potentially compromising reliability and security.To address these challenges, the LOOM project is creating an intuitive, expressive synchronization language and a system called LOOM for bypassing races in live programs. The language enables developers to write declarative, succinct execution filters to describe their synchronization intents on code. To fix races, LOOM installs these filters in live programs for immediate protection against races, until a software update is available and the program can be restarted.The greatest impact of this project will be a new, effective language and system and novel technologies to improve the reliability of multithreaded program, benefiting business, government, and individuals.