Litcius/Paper detail

Fuzzing Loop Optimizations in Compilers for C++ and Data-Parallel Languages

Vsevolod Livinskii, Dmitry Babokin, John Regehr

2023Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages35 citationsDOIOpen Access PDF

Abstract

Compilers are part of the foundation upon which software systems are built; they need to be as correct as possible. This paper is about stress-testing loop optimizers; it presents a major reimplementation of Yet Another Random Program Generator (YARPGen), an open-source generative compiler fuzzer. This new version has found 122 bugs, both in compilers for data-parallel languages, such as the Intel® Implicit SPMD Program Compiler and the Intel® oneAPI DPC++ compiler, and in C++ compilers such as GCC and Clang/LLVM. The first main contribution of our work is a novel method for statically avoiding undefined behavior when generating loops; the resulting programs conform to the relevant language standard, enabling automated testing. The second main contribution is a collection of mechanisms for increasing the diversity of generated loop code; in our evaluation, we demonstrate that these make it possible to trigger loop optimizations significantly more often, providing opportunities to discover bugs in the optimizers.

Topics & Concepts

CompilerComputer scienceFuzz testingProgramming languageOptimizing compilerCode generationParallel computingCompiler correctnessSPMDCompiler constructionSoftwareOperating systemKey (lock)Software Testing and Debugging TechniquesAdvanced Malware Detection TechniquesSoftware Engineering Research