On interleaving space exploration of multi-threaded programs

Abstract

Exploring the interleaving space of a multithreaded program to efficiently detect concurrency bugs is important but also difficult because of the astronomically many thread schedules. This paper presents a novel framework to decompose a thread schedule generator that explores the interleaving space into the composition of a basic generator and its extension under the “small interleaving hypothesis”. Under this framework, we in-depth analyzed research work on interleaving space exploration, illustrated how to design an effective schedule generator, and shed light on future research opportunities.

Keywords

survey / testing / concurrency bugs / interleaving space

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