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Article

iWatcher: Efficient Architectural Support for Software Debugging

Authors:

Josep TorrellasAuthors Info & Claims

ISCA '04: Proceedings of the 31st annual international symposium on Computer architecture

Page 224

Published: 02 March 2004 Publication History

Abstract

Recent impressive performance improvements in computer architecturehave not led to significant gains in ease of debugging.Software debugging often relies on inserting run-time softwarechecks. In many cases, however, it is hard to find the root causeof a bug. Moreover, program execution typically slows down significantly,often by 10-100 times.To address this problem, this paper introduces the IntelligentWatcher (iWatcher), novel architectural support to monitor dynamicexecution with minimal overhead, automatically, and flexibly.iWatcher associates program-specified monitoring functionswith memory locations. When any such location is accessed, themonitoring function is automatically triggered with low overhead.To further reduce overhead and support rollback, iWatcher canleverage Thread-Level Speculation (TLS). To test iWatcher, we useapplications with various bugs. Our results show that iWatcher detectsmany more software bugs than Valgrind, a well-known open-sourcebug detector. Moreover, iWatcher only induces a 4-80%execution overhead, which is orders of magnitude less than Valgrind.Even with 20% of the dynamic loads monitored in a program,iWatcher adds only 66-174% overhead. Finally, TLS is effective atreducing overheads for programs with substantial monitoring.

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Karandikar SOu AAmid AMao HKatz RNikolić BAsanović KLarus JCeze LStrauss K(2020)FirePerfProceedings of the Twenty-Fifth International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems10.1145/3373376.3378455(715-731)Online publication date: 9-Mar-2020
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iWatcher: Efficient Architectural Support for Software Debugging
1. Software and its engineering
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      1. Software defect analysis

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iWatcher: Efficient Architectural Support for Software Debugging
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Recent impressive performance improvements in computer architecturehave not led to significant gains in ease of debugging.Software debugging often relies on inserting run-time softwarechecks. In many cases, however, it is hard to find the root causeof a ...
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iWatcher lets programmers associate specified functions to "watched" memory locations or objects. access to any such location automatically triggers the monitoring function in the hardware. Relative to otherapproaches, iWatcher detects many real bugs at ...
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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ISCA '04: Proceedings of the 31st annual international symposium on Computer architecture

June 2004

373 pages

ISBN:0769521436

ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News Volume 32, Issue 2
ISCA 2004
March 2004
373 pages
ISSN:0163-5964
DOI:10.1145/1028176
Issue’s Table of Contents

Sponsors

SIGARCH: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Architecture

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IEEE Computer Society

United States

Publication History

Published: 02 March 2004

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ISCA04

Sponsor:

SIGARCH

ISCA04: The 31st Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture 2004

June 19 - 23, 2004

München, Germany

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ISCA '04 Paper Acceptance Rate 31 of 217 submissions, 14%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 543 of 3,203 submissions, 17%

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ISCA '25

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The 52nd Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture

June 21 - 25, 2025

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Cited By

Karandikar SOu AAmid AMao HKatz RNikolić BAsanović KLarus JCeze LStrauss K(2020)FirePerfProceedings of the Twenty-Fifth International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems10.1145/3373376.3378455(715-731)Online publication date: 9-Mar-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3373376.3378455
Pina LAndronidis ACadar CKaeli DPericàs M(2018)FreeDAProceedings of the 15th ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers10.1145/3203217.3203237(1-10)Online publication date: 8-May-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3203217.3203237
Sinha KSethumadhavan S(2018)Practical memory safety with RESTProceedings of the 45th Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture10.1109/ISCA.2018.00056(600-611)Online publication date: 2-Jun-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ISCA.2018.00056
Verma AZhou HBooth SKing RCoole JKeep AMarshall JFeng W(2017)Developing Dynamic Profiling and Debugging Support in OpenCL for FPGAsProceedings of the 54th Annual Design Automation Conference 201710.1145/3061639.3062230(1-6)Online publication date: 18-Jun-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3061639.3062230
Lee JHeo ILee YPaek Y(2016)Efficient Security Monitoring with the Core Debug Interface in an Embedded ProcessorACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems10.1145/290761122:1(1-29)Online publication date: 27-May-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2907611
Milewicz RVanka RTuck JQuinlan DPirkelbauer P(2016)Lightweight runtime checking of C programs with RTCComputer Languages, Systems and Structures10.1016/j.cl.2016.01.00145:C(191-203)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.cl.2016.01.001
Heo IKim MLee YChoi CLee JKang BPaek Y(2015)Implementing an Application-Specific Instruction-Set Processor for System-Level Dynamic Program Analysis EnginesACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems10.1145/274623820:4(1-32)Online publication date: 28-Sep-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2746238
Milewicz RVanka RTuck JQuinlan DPirkelbauer PWainwright RCorchado JBechini AHong J(2015)Runtime checking C programsProceedings of the 30th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing10.1145/2695664.2695906(2107-2114)Online publication date: 13-Apr-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2695664.2695906
Arulraj JJin GLu S(2014)Leveraging the short-term memory of hardware to diagnose production-run software failuresACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News10.1145/2654822.254197342:1(207-222)Online publication date: 24-Feb-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2654822.2541973
Arulraj JJin GLu S(2014)Leveraging the short-term memory of hardware to diagnose production-run software failuresACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/2644865.254197349:4(207-222)Online publication date: 24-Feb-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2644865.2541973
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