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Computer Scientist Stephen Freund Awarded NSF Grant to Study Multithreaded Software
[August 01, 2014]

Computer Scientist Stephen Freund Awarded NSF Grant to Study Multithreaded Software


(Targeted News Service Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., July 31 -- Williams College issued the following news release: The National Science Foundation has awarded Williams College computer science professor Stephen Freund a three-year, $198,993 grant to study techniques for automatically identifying defects in multithreaded software.



Multithreaded programs are those capable of executing more than one task, or thread, simultaneously, explains Freund, whose research focuses on the design and implementation of programming languages and verification of multithreaded programs. Designing software to use multiple threads can lead to performance improvements, particularly on today's multi-core processors. However, if threads are not properly coordinated and synchronized, they may interfere with each other when they access shared resources, such as memory or files. "The effects of such interference problems range from small, innocuous faults to catastrophic failures, such as the 2003 Northeast power blackout," Freund says.

Interference problems can be quite difficult to identify and fix. As Freund notes, "Manually testing for the presence of interference errors in source code can only cover a small fraction of the possible ways in which operations from different threads are interleaved." Freund and his collaborator Cormac Flanagan at the University of California, Santa Cruz, hope to develop analysis tools capable of automatically detecting such errors, thus substantially improving the quality of software.


"The broader impacts of this research are to potentially transform the principles and practices of multithreaded software engineering by enabling more widespread adoption of analysis tools to detect concurrency defects," Freund says. "This work will contribute to the national software research infrastructure and increase access to science research opportunities and training for students." CC AutoTriage13cn-140801-30TagarumaMar-4817298 30TagarumaMar (c) 2014 Targeted News Service

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