User level DB: A debugging API for user-level thread libraries

Kevin Pouget, Marc Pérachey, Patrick Carribault, Hervé Jourdren

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

With the advent of the multicore era, parallel programming is becoming ubiquitous. Multithreading is a common approach to benefit from these architectures. Hybrid M:N libraries like MultiProcessor Communication (MPC) or MARCEL reach high performance expressing fine-grain parallelism by mapping M user-level threads onto N kernellevel threads. However, such implementations skew the debuggers' ability to distinguish one thread from another, because only kernel threads can be handled. SUN MICROSYSTEMS' THREAD DB API is an interface between the debugger and the thread library allowing the debugger to inquire for thread semantics details. In this paper we introduce the USER LEVEL DB (ULDB) library, an implementation of the THREAD DB interface abstracting the common features of user-level thread libraries. ULDB gathers the generic algorithms required to debug threads and provide the thread library with a small and focused interface. We describe the usage of our library with widely-used debuggers (GDB, DBX) and the integration into a user-level thread library (GNUPTH) and two high-performance hybrid libraries (MPC, MARCEL).

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 2010 IEEE International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing, Workshops and Phd Forum, IPDPSW 2010
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2 Jul 2010
Externally publishedYes
Event2010 IEEE International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing, Workshops and Phd Forum, IPDPSW 2010 - Atlanta, GA, United States
Duration: 19 Apr 201023 Apr 2010

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 2010 IEEE International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing, Workshops and Phd Forum, IPDPSW 2010

Conference

Conference2010 IEEE International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing, Workshops and Phd Forum, IPDPSW 2010
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityAtlanta, GA
Period19/04/1023/04/10

Keywords

  • Debugging
  • GDB
  • MPC
  • Multithreading

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