Abstract

Several methods currently exist for detecting data races in an execution of a shared-memory parallel program. Although these methods address an important aspect of parallel program debugging, they do not precisely define the notion of a data race. As a result, is it not possible to precisely state which data races are detected, nor is the meaning of the reported data races always clear. Furthermore, these methods can sometimes generate false data race reports. They can determine whether a data race was exhibited during an execution, but when more than one data race is reported, only limited indication is given as to which ones are real. This paper addresses these two issues. We first present a model for reasoning about data races, and then present a two-phase approach to data race detection that attempts to validate the accuracy of each detected data race. Our model of data races distinguishes among those data races that actually occurred during an execution (actual data races), those...

Citations