Efficient debugging primitives for multiprocessors

Existing kernel-level debugging primitives are inappropriate for instrumenting complex sequential or parallel programs. These functions incur a heavy overhead in their use of system calls and process switches. Context switches are used to alternately invoke the debugger and the target programs. System calls are used to communicate data between the target and debugger. None of this is necessary in shared-memory multiprocessors. Multiple processors concurrently run both the debugger and the target. Shared-memory is used to implement efficient communication. The target's state is accessed by running both the target and the debugger in the same address space. Finally, instrumentation points, which have largely been implemented as traps to the system, are reimplemented as simple branches to routines of arbitrary complexity maintained by the debugger. Not only are primitives such as conditional breakpoints thus generalized, but their efficiency is improved by several orders of magnitude. In the process, much of the traditional system's kernel support for debugging is reimplemented at user-level. This paper describes the implementation of debugging primitives in Parasight, a parallel programming environment. Parasight has been used to implement conditional breakpoints, an important primitive for both high-level and parallel debugging. Preliminary measurements indicate that Parasight breakpoints are 1000 times faster than the breakpoints in parallel “cdb”, a conventional UNIX debugger. Light-weight conditional breakpoints open up new opportunities for debugging and profiling both parallel and sequential programs.