WoDET 2012 - 3rd Workshop on Determinism and Correctness in Parallel Programming

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 Third 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