Detection Of Control Flow Errors In Parallel Programs At Compile Time

Abstract

This paper describes a general technique to identify control flow errors in parallel programs, which can be automated into a compiler. The compiler builds a system of linear equations that describes the global control flow of the whole program. Solving these equations using standard techniques of linear algebra can locate a wide range of control flow bugs at compile time. This paper also describes an implementation of this control flow analysis technique in a prototype compiler for a well-known parallel programming language. In contrast to previous research in automated parallel program analysis, our technique is efficient for large programs, and does not limit the range of language features.