Lightweight Static Analysis for Data Race Detection in Operating System Kernels

• Main Authors: P. S. Andrianov, V. S. Mutilin, A. V. Khoroshilov
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ivannikov Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences 2018-10-01
• Series: Труды Института системного программирования РАН
• Subjects: статический анализ; состояние гонки; ядро операционной системы; разделяемые данные
• Online Access: https://ispranproceedings.elpub.ru/jour/article/view/677

The paper presents an approach to lightweight static data race detection, called CPALockator. It takes into account the specifics of operating system kernels, such as complex parallelism and kernel specifics synchronization mechanisms. The method is based on the Lockset one, but it implements two heuristics that are aimed to reduce amount of false alarms: a memory model and a model of parallelism. The main target of our research and evaluation is operating system kernels but the approach can be applied to the other programs as well.