The workshop is a full-day event at IPDPS 2004 focusing on techniques and systems that aid in debugging and testing of multi-threaded/parallel/distributed (MPD)applications systems. The workshop has a practical and applied emphasis on systems that have been implemented in (at least) prototype form. This workshop concentrates on works whose main contributions are in the field of testing and debugging.
Of special interest are contributions that combine a number of technologies. Works with contribution in testing but with a primary impact in other fields (e.g., high-level programming languages, performance modeling)) should be submitted to other workshops at IPDPS.
Although debuggers and profilers are the traditional examples of these tools on sequential machines, there are issues unique to MPD systems that are not commonly addressed. For example, deadlock, load imbalance, data sharing patterns, race conditions, and contention are important problems. In order to find some classes of bugs in MPD applications, specific timing conditions are required. As a result, timing bugs are found very late in the testing process or by the end users. Many established testing techniques and tools are insufficient for non-sequential programs.
Selected papers will be published in a special issue of "Concurrency and Computation: Practice & Experience."
Topics of interest to the workshop include, but are not limited to:
Tools for testing or debugging of MPD applications
