6th Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Systems:
Testing, ****ysis, and Debugging
(PADTAD VI)

In conjunction with
International Symposium on Software Testing and ****ysis
(ISSTA 2008)

July 20-21 2008
Seattle, WA
http://www.haifa.il.ibm.com/Workshop...008/index.html

The PADTAD 2008 workshop is a day and a half event at ISSTA 2008
focusing on techniques and systems that aid in the testing, ****ysis,
and debugging of multi-threaded/parallel/distributed applications
systems. The workshop has a practical 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.

Although debuggers and profilers are the traditional examples of these
tools on sequential machines, there are issues unique to
multi-threaded/parallel/distributed systems that are not commonly
addressed. Examples of such significant challenges in
multi-threaded/parallel/distributed systems include deadlock, load
imbalance, data sharing patterns, race conditions, and contention.
In order to find certain classes of bugs in
multi-threaded/parallel/distributed applications, specific timing
conditions are required. As a result, timing bugs are found very late
in the testing process or by end users. Many established testing
techniques and tools are insufficient for non-sequential programs.

Support for students, especially paper authors, will be provided by
our sponsors. For applications, please contact Shmuel Ur.

A special session will focus on teaching students and professionals
how to develop multi-threaded/parallel/distributed systems. We are
soliciting abstracts as well as regular papers on teaching how to
design, test, review, and verify multi-threaded/parallel/distributed
systems. Discussion of overall approach, useful exercises and
projects, experience reports, etc., are welcome.

Accepted papers, as well as education session abstracts, will be
published in a CDROM proceedings and will be included in the ACM
Digital Library (just like other ISSTA 2008 papers).

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

* Techniques for multi-core processors
* Techniques for MPI and OpenMP or other library based applications
* Transactional memory
* Tools for testing or debugging of multi-threaded/parallel/
distributed
applications
* Test generation algorithms for multi-threaded/parallel/distributed
applications
* Debugging advanced network interface technologies (e.g., Myrinet,
VIA)
* Debugging and testing multi-threaded/parallel/distributed
applications
* Testing and Debugging of multi-threaded/parallel/distributed
applications
written using domain-specific languages
* Using static ****ysis or formal verification to enhance debugging
and testing of multi-threaded/parallel/distributed applications
* Formal specification of concurrency libraries, and uses in
compliance testing of implementations
* Detecting race conditions and deadlocks
* Replay of multi-threaded/parallel/distributed applications
* Finding timing bugs early in the process
* Testing real-time multi-threaded/parallel/distributed applications
* Fault injection of multi-threaded/parallel/distributed applications
* Testing the fault tolerance of multi-threaded/parallel/distributed
applications
* Testing and debugging techniques for timing related bugs in hardware
* Pilot projects in applying new testing techiniques to
multi-threaded/parallel/distributed applications
* Review techniques and review tools for multi-threaded/parallel/
distributed
code
* Teaching of multi-threaded/parallel/distributed system design,
verification and testing

IMPORTANT DATES

April 10, 2008: Submission deadline
May 8, 2008: Author notification
May 22, 2008: Final version due

ORGANIZERS

General Chair: Shmuel Ur, IBM Haifa Research Lab, Israel
Program Chair: Scott D. Stoller, Stony Brook University, New York, USA
Education Session Chair: Eitan Farchi, IBM Haifa Research Lab, Israel

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Yosi Ben-Asher, Haifa University, Israel
Giorgio Delzanno, Universita di Genova, Italy
Jack Dongarra, University of Tennessee, USA
Eitan Farchi, IBM Haifa Research Lab, Israel
Mike Feeley, University of British Columbia, Canada
Bernd Finkbeiner, Universität des Saarlandes , Germany
Cormac Flanagan, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA
Ganesh Gopalakrishnan, University of Utah
Klaus Havelund, NASA's Jet Propulsion Labratory
Daniel J. Quinlan, Lawrence Livermore National Labratories, USA
Joao Lourenco, Univ. Nova de Lisboa, Portugal
Zhiqiang Ma, Intel, USA
Paul Petersen, Intel USA
Shaz Qadeer, Microsoft Research, USA
Grigore Rosu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
Christoph Steindl, Catalysts, Austria
Scott D. Stoller, Stony Brook University, New York, USA
Paul Strooper, University of Queensland, Australia
Serdar Tasiran, Koc University, Turkey
Shmuel Ur, IBM Haifa Research Lab, Israel
Willem Visser, NASA, USA
Tao Xie, North Carolina State University, USA