Abstract
Debugging parallel programs can be very time-consuming and tedious, because the multiplicity of communicating processes increases the complexity of a program and the probability of incorrect behavior. Solutions are provided by debugging tools, which try to offer meaningful ways to investigate errors and their original causes. The MAD environment is a debugging toolset, which focuses on parallel and distributed programs. This paper discusses the application of MAD to real-world programs with practicability and usability as the main goals. The observations are based on a series of debugging sessions conducted for a specific application of theoretical physics, with the opinions of the tool developer on one side and the view of the application developer on the other side.
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
References
Allen, D., Bowker, R., Jourdenais, K., Simons, J., Sistare, S., and Title, R.: “The Prism Programming Environment”, Proc. Supercomputer Debugging Workshop 91, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, pp. 1–7 (November 1991).
Campbell, C.E., Krotscheck, E., and Saarela, M.: “Quantum Sticking, Scattering, and Transmission of 4He atoms from Superfluid 4He Surfaces” Physical Review Letters Vol. 80, No. 10, pp. 2169–2172 (1998)
Clements, B.E., Krotscheck, E., and Tymczak, C.J.: “Multiphonon excitations in boson quantum films” Physical Review B Vol. 53, No. 18, pp. 12253–12275 (1996)
Cunha, J.C., Lourenco, J.M., Antao, T.: “An Experiment in Tool Integration: the DDBG Parallel and Distributed Debugger”, EUROMICRO Journal of Systems Architecture, Vol. 45, No. 11, pp. 897–907 (1999).
Etnus, LLC: “TotalView Debugger”, http://www.etnus.com/Products/TotalView (January 2003)
Hollingsworth, J.K, Miller, B.P., Cargille, J.: “Dynamic Program Instrumentation for Scalable Performance Tools”, Proc. SHPCC, 1994 Scalable High Performance Computing Conference, Knoxville, TN, USA, pp. 841–850 (May 1994).
Hood, R.: “The p2d2 Project: Building a Portable Distributed Debugger”, Proc. SPDT’96, ACM SIGMETRICS Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Tools, Philadelphia, USA, pp. 127–136 (May 1996).
Kranzlmüller, D., Grabner, S., Volkert, J.: “Debugging with the MAD Environment”, Parallel Computing, Vol. 23, No. 1–2, pp. 199–217 (Apr. 1997)
Kranzlmüller, D.: “Event Graph Analysis for Debugging Massively Parallel Programs”, PhD Thesis, GUP, Joh. Kepler University Linz, http://www.gup.uni-linz.ac.at/~dk/thesis (Sept. 2000).
Message Passing Interface Forum: “MPI: A Message-Passing Interface Standard-Version 1.1”, http://www.mcs.anl.gov/mpi/ (June 1995).
Pancake, C.M.: “Visualization Techniques for Parallel Debugging and Performance-Tuning Tools”, in: Zomaya, A.Y., “Parallel Computing: Paradigms and Applications”, Intl. Thomson Computer Press, pp. 376–393 (1996).
Rosenberg, J.B.: “How Debuggers Work: Algorithms, Data Structures, and Architecture”, JohnWiley & Sons, New York (1996).
Wismüller, R., Oberhuber, M., Krammer, J., and Hansen, O.: “Interactive Debugging and Performance Analysis of Massively Parallel Applications”, Parallel Computing, Vol. 22, No. 3, pp. 415–442 (March 1996).
Wismüller, R., Dozsa, G., and Drotos, D.: “Using OMIS for On-line Monitoring in the GRADE Programming Environment”, Proc. DAPSYS 98, Austrian-Hungarian Workshop on Distributed and Parallel Systems, Budapest, Hungary, pp. 177–184 (Sept. 1998).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2003 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Kranzlmüller, D., Rimnac, A. (2003). Parallel Program Debugging with MAD — A Practical Approach. In: Sloot, P.M.A., Abramson, D., Bogdanov, A.V., Gorbachev, Y.E., Dongarra, J.J., Zomaya, A.Y. (eds) Computational Science — ICCS 2003. ICCS 2003. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2660. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44864-0_21
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44864-0_21
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-40197-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-44864-8
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive