Understanding and Tuning the Performance of Synchronized Methods in Java with Program Analysis and Software Visualization Tools
Shah, Michael.
2017
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Abstract: Understanding the behavior and performance of concurrent
multithreaded programs remains a difficult problem for software engineers. As software
relies on the addition of multiple processors to increase throughput and execution speed,
software must become increasingly multithreaded to reap the performance gains.
Multithreaded programs however have to coordinate and share resources, an... read mored where these
resources are shared (known as a critical section) becomes a potential performance
bottleneck. Programmers want to maximize performance by taking extra effort to write
concurrent software, but they also want to ensure that time spent in a critical section is
minimized to reduce the amount of code that executes sequentially. Often times programmers
favor correctness, but do not pay attention to performance within critical sections. In
this dissertation critical sections are investigated specifically because high variability
in their execution time can be a key component of a program not matching performance
expectations. This high variability within executions of a critical section can
unpredictably impede threads from making progress and be a source of software hangs. These
occasional transient program hangs in critical sections interrupt a smooth user experience,
and are difficult to find and reproduce as they are infrequent and hard to reproduce. Thus,
there is a need to research and develop tools that can uncover new insights into critical
sections. Thesis Statement: Static, dynamic, and software visualization analysis tools
specifically focused on critical sections are needed to help uncover unexplored variability
in critical sections to avoid unintended software hangs. This dissertation presents the
discoveries I have found through a series of novel tools built to analyze concurrent Java
programs. I will be presenting the following tools: 1. Iceberg, a static and dynamic
program analysis tool for identifying features of critical sections in Java. 2. Critical
Section Investigator, which is a tool that visualizes the call trees of executions of a
various critical sections to understand where time is spent. 3. A Microarray call-graph
visualization tool, which is a new visualization that helps programmers comprehend the
software engineering architecture of large programs. In particular, programmers can see
call graphs of large multithreaded programs. Together these new tools can be used by
programmers to understand the performance of their critical sections and uncover difficult
to find software hangs caused by variable performance in critical section
executions.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2017.
Submitted to the Dept. of Computer Science.
Advisor: Samuel Guyer.
Committee: Kathleen Fisher, Remco Chang, Mark Hempstead, and Tao Schardl.
Keyword: Computer science.read less - ID:
- 9z903b25m
- Component ID:
- tufts:23108
- To Cite:
- DCA Citation Guide EndNote
