Scalable Temporal Order Analysis for Large Scale DebuggingScalable Temporal Order Analysis for Large Scale DebuggingThis research was conducted by Dong H. Ahn, Bronis R. de Supinski, Ignacio Laguna, Gregory L. Lee, Ben Liblit, Barton P. Miller, and Martin Schulz. The paper appeared in the 2009 ACM / IEEE Computer Society International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis (SC 2009).
We present a scalable temporal order analysis technique that supports debugging of large scale applications by classifying MPI tasks based on their logical program execution order. Our approach combines static analysis techniques with dynamic analysis to determine this temporal order scalably. It uses scalable stack trace analysis techniques to guide selection of critical program execution points in anomalous application runs. Our novel temporal ordering engine then leverages this information along with the application’s static control structure to apply data flow analysis techniques to determine key application data such as loop control variables. We then use lightweight techniques to gather the dynamic data that determines the temporal order of the MPI tasks. Our evaluation, which extends the Stack Trace Analysis Tool (STAT), demonstrates that this temporal order analysis technique can isolate bugs in benchmark codes with injected faults as well as a real world hang case with AMG2006.
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