SmartTrack: efficient predictive race detection

Abstract

Widely used data race detectors, including the state-of-the-art FastTrack algorithm, incur performance costs that are acceptable for regular in-house testing, but miss races detectable from the analyzed execution. Predictive analyses detect more data races in an analyzed execution than FastTrack detects, but at significantly higher performance cost. This paper presents SmartTrack, an algorithm that optimizes predictive race detection analyses, including two analyses from prior work and a new analysis introduced in this paper. SmartTrack incorporates two main optimizations: (1) epoch and ownership optimizations from prior work, applied to predictive analysis for the first time, and (2) novel conflicting critical section optimizations introduced by this paper. Our evaluation shows that SmartTrack achieves performance competitive with FastTrack—a qualitative improvement in the state of the art for data race detection.