The Grainger College of Engineering
Parallel Programming Laboratory

Parallel Debugging

Charm++ offers a variety of parallel debugging options, from the extremely basic to the extremely sophisticated. The traditional debugging methods, such as logging (via the CkPrintf routine) and interactive debugging (via the "++debug" command line option) are supported under Charm++.

In addition, Charm++ offers several additional features designed to simplify application development. Linking with "-memory paranoid" checks all dynamic heap allocation calls for common errors, such as double-delete, random-delete, read-after-delete, buffer over- and under-write errors. Charm++, when compiled without "-DCMK_OPTIMIZE", contains hundreds of assertions to catch invalid parameters and unintialized data passed to API routines.

We are working on a sophisticated parallel debugger, with the ability to set breakpoints, examine variables, objects, and messages across the entire machine. The design of this debugger is described in the paper below.

Papers / Talks