Dynamic verification of Multicore Communication applications in MCAPI

Abstract

We present a dynamic direct code verification tool called MCC (MCAPI Checker) for applications written in the newly proposed Multicore Communications API (MCAPI). MCAPI provides both message passing and threading constructs, making the concurrent programming involved in MCAPI application development a non-trivial challenge. MCC intercepts MCAPI calls issued by user applications. Then, using a verification scheduler, MCC orchestrates a dependency directed replay of all relevant thread interleavings. This paper presents the technical challenges in handling MCC's non-blocking constructs. This is the first dynamic model checker for MCAPI applications, and as such our work provides designers the opportunity to use a formal design tool in verifying MCAPI applications and evaluating MCAPI itself in the formative stages of MCAPI.