Rerun

Abstract

Multiprocessor deterministic replay has many potential uses in the era of multicore computing, including enhanced debugging, fault tolerance, and intrusion detection. While sources of nondeterminism in a uniprocessor can be recorded efficiently in software, it seems likely that hardware support will be needed in a multiprocessor environment where the outcome of memory races must also be recorded.We develop a memory race recording mechanism, called Rerun, that uses small hardware state (~166 bytes/core), writes a small race log (~4 bytes/kilo- instruction), and operates well as the number of cores per system scales (e.g., to16cores). Rerun exploits the dual of conventional wisdom in race recording: Rather than record information about individual memory accesses that conflict, we record how long a thread executes without conflicting with other threads. In particular, Rerun passively creates atomic episodes. Each episode is a dynamic instruction sequence that a thread happens to execute without interacting with other threads. Rerun uses Lamport Clocks to order episodes and enable replay of an equivalent execution.