An Efficient Binary Technique for Trace Simplifications of Concurrent Programs

TL;DR

This paper introduces a static, connectivity-based method for simplifying traces of concurrent programs, reducing context switches and improving analysis efficiency while maintaining semantic equivalence.

Contribution

It presents a novel static approach for trace simplification using connectivity analysis and a new operational semantics for concurrent programs.

Findings

Reduces number of context switches in traces

Proves correctness and efficiency of the method

Outperforms previous trace simplification techniques

Abstract

Execution of concurrent programs implies frequent switching between different thread contexts. This property perplexes analyzing and reasoning about concurrent programs. Trace simplification is a technique that aims at alleviating this problem via transforming a concurrent program trace (execution) into a semantically equivalent one. The resulted trace typically includes less number of context switches than that in the original trace. This paper presents a new static approach for trace simplification. This approach is based on a connectivity analysis that calculates for each trace-point connectivity and context-switching information. The paper also presents a novel operational semantics for concurrent programs. The semantics is used to prove the correctness and efficiency of the proposed techniques for connectivity analysis and trace simplification. The results of experiments testing the proposed technique on problems treated by previous work for trace simplification are also shown in the paper. The results prove the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed method.