SPINning Parallel Systems Software

TL;DR

This paper discusses using the SPIN model checker to verify dynamic, distributed parallel system components, specifically the MPD system, highlighting challenges and results of simulation and verification.

Contribution

It demonstrates how SPIN can be applied to verify dynamic parallel algorithms in a real-world system, addressing performance and scalability issues.

Findings

Successful modeling of MPD's dynamic processes in SPIN

Effective simulation and verification of parallel algorithms

Insights into performance challenges of verification

Abstract

We describe our experiences in using SPIN to verify parts of the Multi Purpose Daemon (MPD) parallel process management system. MPD is a distributed collection of processes connected by Unix network sockets. MPD is dynamic: processes and connections among them are created and destroyed as MPD is initialized, runs user processes, recovers from faults, and terminates. This dynamic nature is easily expressible in the SPIN/PROMELA framework but poses performance and scalability challenges. We present here the results of expressing some of the parallel algorithms of MPD and executing both simulation and verification runs with SPIN.