Automatic Code Instrumentation Research Articles

Fast and Energy-Efficient State Checkpointing for Intermittent Computing

Intermittently powered embedded devices ensure forward progress of programs through state checkpointing in non-volatile memory. Checkpointing is, however, expensive in energy and adds to the execution times. To minimize this overhead, we present DICE, a system that renders differential checkpointing profitable on these devices. DICE is unique because it is a software-only technique and efficient because it only operates in volatile main memory to evaluate the differential. DICE may be integrated with reactive (Hibernus) or proactive (MementOS, HarvOS) checkpointing systems, and arbitrary code can be enabled with DICE using automatic code-instrumentation requiring no additional programmer effort. By reducing the cost of checkpoints, DICE cuts the peak energy demand of these devices, allowing operation with energy buffers that are one-eighth of the size originally required, thus leading to benefits such as smaller device footprints and faster recharging to operational voltage level. The impact on final performance is striking: with DICE, Hibernus requires one order of magnitude fewer checkpoints and one order of magnitude shorter time to complete a workload in real-world settings.

Virtual Observation System for Earth System Model: An Application to ACME Land Model Simulations

Investigating and evaluating physical-chemical-biological processes within an Earth system model (EMS) can be very challenging due to the complexity of both model design and software implementation. A virtual observation system (VOS) is presented to enable interactive observation of these processes during system simulation. Based on advance computing technologies, such as compiler-based software analysis, automatic code instrumentation, and high-performance data transport, the VOS provides run-time observation capability, in-situ data analytics for Earth system model simulation, model behavior adjustment opportunities through simulation steering. A VOS for a terrestrial land model simulation within the Accelerated Climate Modeling for Energy model is also presented to demonstrate the implementation details and system innovations.

A policy-based approach for strong mobility of composed Web services

This paper presents a flexible, portable, and transparent solution for strong mobility of composed Web services relying on policy-oriented techniques. The proposed approach provides a checkpoint solution based on automatic code instrumentation using correct source code transformation rules. This checkpoint technique permits to save the execution state of a mobile orchestration process as well as the execution states of its orchestrated partners. Thus, after migration, only non-executed codes will be resumed. In addition, our approach enables dynamic adaptation of the employed checkpointing and mobility techniques using aspects. For that, we use policies allowing dynamic selection of the used checkpointing and mobility techniques according to the execution context. Moreover, the proposed solution includes a module allowing the determination of the checkpointing interval satisfying QoS requirements. Experimentations show the efficiency of the proposed solution.

An instrumentation technique for online analysis of multithreaded programs

AbstractThis paper presents an automatic code instrumentation technique, based on multithreaded vector clocks, for extracting the causal partial order on relevant state update events from a running multithreaded program. This technique is used in a formal testing environment, not only to detect, but especially to predict safety errors in multithreaded programs. The prediction process consists of rigorously analyzing other potential executions that are consistent with the causal partial order: some of these can be erroneous despite the fact that the particular observed execution was successful. The technique has been implemented as part of a Java program analysis tool. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.