The 2nd Workshop on Determinism and Correctness in Parallel Programming

Newport Beach, California, March 6, 2011

Held in conjunction with ASPLOS 2011

News!:

Program posted.

We have a great line-up of invited speakers:

• Charles Leiserson, MIT
• Kunle Olukotun, Stanford
• Martin Vechev, IBM Research

And a distinguished program committee:

• Vikram Adve, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Saman Amarasinghe, MIT
• Emery Berger, University of Massachusetts
• Hans-J Boehm, HP Labs
• Luis Ceze, University of Washington
• Bryan Ford, Yale University
• Tim Harris, MSR
• Jim Larus, MSR
• Vivek Sarkar, Rice University

Unintentional non-determinism is the bane of multithreaded software development. Defective software might execute correctly hundreds of times before a subtle synchronization bug appears, and when it does, developers often cannot readily reproduce it while debugging. Nondeterminism also complicates testing as good coverage requires both a wide range of program inputs and a large number of possible interleavings for each input. These problems have taken on renewed urgency as multicore systems have driven parallel programming to become mainstream. Determinism is emerging as an important research area, ranging from techniques for existing code (including deterministic execution models, parallelizing compilers, and deterministic replay for debugging) to new programming models (including deterministic general purpose languages and run-time systems). Deterministic multiprocessing yields deep open questions in programming languages, compilers, operating systems, runtime systems and architecture. While there is a growing consensus that determinism would greatly help with the programmability challenges of multicore systems, there is still little consensus on many important questions. What are the performance and programmability trade-offs for enforcing deterministic semantics with different approaches? Should deterministic semantics be strictly enforced or guaranteed only for programs that are "well-behaved" in certain ways? How can we support truly non-deterministic algorithms, where non-determinism is intentionally used for improved parallel performance? How can each layer of the system stack contribute to these goals? What are other safety guarantees useful in making parallel programming easier and less error prone (e.g., race-freedom, atomicity, etc..)?

The Second Workshop on Determinism and Correctness in Parallel Programming is an across-the-stack forum to discuss the role of a wide range of correctness properties in parallel and concurrent programming. While determinism is an important theme, the scope of the workshop includes other correctness properties for parallel programs and systems. The workshop will be a full day event with a few invited talks, a moderated debate, and technical sessions for short peer-reviewed papers discussing ideas, positions, or preliminary research results.

In addition to answers to the questions above, topics of interest include:

• Language extensions for disciplined parallel programming models (deterministic, data race-free, etc.)
• Architecture, operating system, runtime system and compiler support for parallel program correctness
• Concurrency debugging techniques
• New properties of parallel programs
• Limit studies and empirical studies of the cost of safety properties
• Studies of the applicability of correctness properties in parallel programs and algorithms
• Concurrency bug avoidance techniques
• Real-world experience with safe parallel programming models, systems, or tools

Submissions

We are seeking submissions of short position papers to be presented at the workshop. Position papers may introduce new ideas relevant to the workshop, propose interesting research directions, and/or describe preliminary research results. Workshop submissions will be judged on novelty, technical merit, and potential for creating thought-provoking discussion at the workshop. There will NOT be a formal proceedings so work presented at this workshop is eligible for republication in future ACM conferences or journals (and other formal venues that have similar republication policies).

Submissions must be in PDF format, in two columns, 10-point font, 1-inch margins, and no longer than 6 pages in total. Please contact the organizers if any of these present a hardship.

Submit papers at: http://dedis.cs.yale.edu/2011/wodet/hotcrp/

Important Dates

Friday, January 21, 2011 Paper Submission (by 11:59pm US Eastern Standard Time) - extended by 48 hours to Jan 24th.

Monday, February 7, 2011 Acceptance notifications

Organizers

Vikram Adve, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Luis Ceze, University of Washington

Bryan Ford, Yale University

Program Committee

Vikram Adve, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Saman Amarasinghe, MIT

Emery Berger, University of Massachusetts

Hans-J Boehm, HP Labs

Luis Ceze, University of Washington

Bryan Ford, Yale University

Tim Harris, MSR

Jim Larus, MSR

Vivek Sarkar, Rice University

Update: this site was converted from a Classic Google Site to a new-style site in August 2020. An archive of the complete original website is available in this GitHub repository, and is browsable via GitHub Pages.