ColFinder Collaborative Concurrency Bug Detection

Abstract

Many concurrency bugs are extremely difficult to be detected by random test due to huge input space and huge interleaving space. The multicore technology trend worsens this problem. We propose an innovative, collaborative approach called ColFinder to detect concurrency bugs effectively and efficiently. ColFinder uses static analysis to identify potential buggy statements. With respect to these statements, ColFinder uses program slicing to cut the original programs into smaller programs. Finally, it uses dynamic active test to verify whether the potential buggy statements will trigger real bugs. We implement a prototype of ColFinder, and evaluate it with several real-world programs. It significantly improves the probability of bug manifestation, from 0.75% to 89%. Additionally, ColFinder makes the time of bug manifestation obviously reduced by program slicing, with an average of 33%.