SATCheck: SAT-directed stateless model checking for SC and TSO
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Writing low-level concurrent code is well known to be challenging and error prone. The widespread deployment of multi-core hardware and the shift towards using low-level concurrent data structures has moved the problem into the mainstream. Finding bugs in such code may require finding a specific bug-revealing thread interleaving out of a huge space of parallel executions. Model-checking is a powerful technique for exhaustively testing code. However, scaling model checking presents a significant challenge. In this paper we present a new and more scalable technique for model checking concurrent code, based on concrete execution. Our technique observes concrete behaviors, builds a model of these behaviors, encodes the model in SAT, and leverages SAT solver technology to find executions that reveal new behaviors. It then runs the new execution, incorporates the newly observed behavior, and repeats the process until it has explored all reachable behaviors. We have implemented a prototype of our approach in the SATCheck tool. Our tool supports both the Total Store Ordering (TSO) and Sequentially Consistent (SC) memory models. We evaulate SATCheck by testing several concurrent data structure implementations and comparing its performance to the original DPOR stateless model checking algorithm implemented in CDSChecker, the source DPOR algorithm implemented in Nidhugg, and CheckFence. Our experiments show that SATCheck scales better than previous approaches while at the same time operating on concrete executions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.016 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".