Don't sit on the fence: A static analysis approach to automatic fence insertion

TL;DR

This paper presents a scalable static analysis method for automatic insertion of memory fences in large codebases, addressing the challenge of ensuring memory consistency in modern architectures.

Contribution

It introduces a new scalable static analysis technique implemented in the musketeer tool for automatic fence insertion in large systems code.

Findings

Effective on over 350 Debian Linux executables

Handles large codebases with improved scalability

Demonstrates practical applicability in real-world software

Abstract

Modern architectures rely on memory fences to prevent undesired weakenings of memory consistency. As the fences' semantics may be subtle, the automation of their placement is highly desirable. But precise methods for restoring consistency do not scale to deployed systems code. We choose to trade some precision for genuine scalability: our technique is suitable for large code bases. We implement it in our new musketeer tool, and detail experiments on more than 350 executables of packages found in Debian Linux 7.1, e.g. memcached (about 10000 LoC).