Paper

Effective Data-Race Detection for the Kernel

Paper: http://www.usenix.org/events/osdi10/tech/full_papers/Erickson.pdf

Video: http://homeostasis.scs.carleton.ca/osdi/video/erickson.mp4

Authors: John Erickson, Madanlal Musuvathi, Sebastian Burckhardt, Kirk Olynyk from Microsoft Research

Background Concepts

Explain briefly the background concepts and ideas that your fellow classmates will need to know first in order to understand your assigned paper.

Research problem

What is the research problem being addressed by the paper? How does this problem relate to past related work?

Contribution

What are the research contribution(s) of this work? Specifically, what are the key research results, and what do they mean? (What was implemented? Why is it any better than what came before?)

Critique

What is good and not-so-good about this paper? You may discuss both the style and content; be sure to ground your discussion with specific references. Simple assertions that something is good or bad is not enough - you must explain why.

Style

This paper is well put together. It has a strong flow and there is nothing that seems out of place. The authors start with an introduction and then immediately identify key definitions that are used throughout the paper. In the second section which follows the introduction the authors identify the definition of a Data-Race as it relates to their paper. This is important since it is a key concept that is required to understand the entire paper. This definition is required because as the authors state there is no standard for exactly how to define a data-race.[1] In addition to important definitions any background information that is relevant to this paper is presented at the beginning. The key idea which the paper is based on in this case Data Collider and its implementation is explained. An evaluation and conclusion of Data Collider follow its description. The order of the sections makes sense and the author is not jumping around from one concept to another. The organization of the sections and information provided make the paper easy to follow and understand.

Content

Data Collider:

References

[1] Erickson, Musuvathi, Burchhardt, Olynyk, Effective Data-Race Detection for the Kernel, Microsoft Research, 2010.PDF