From: Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com>
To: Paul Winalski <paul.winalski@gmail.com>
Cc: TUHS main list <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] DEC Compilers (was: Re: SDB debugger
Date: Tue, 5 May 2020 17:59:22 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAEoi9W6=qBnjvrfizas6_=xb9-hQ7_+Cg+WcVSdFXbpAF9J_AA@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CABH=_VRSyg_FXokkhXa0SPwg2o8wVTy2XtOm9+RRJwVm8ft=gw@mail.gmail.com>
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On Tue, May 5, 2020 at 1:37 PM Paul Winalski <paul.winalski@gmail.com>
wrote:
> On 5/4/20, Win Treese <treese@acm.org> wrote:
> >
> > Andy Payne, a recent hire at the lab, had been an intern in DEC’s
> > semiconductor group, where he had worked on randomized testing for
> hardware
> > verification. With all the compilers available, he decided to hack up a
> > program to generate random small C programs with computable expected
> > outputs. His program then compiled the random code with each compiler and
> > tested the result. After finding a number of bugs this way, he got tired
> of
> > submitting the bug reports, and changed his program to write and submit
> the
> > bug reports automatically.
> >
> > This caused a little bit of consternation with some of the compiler
> teams at
> > first.
>
> I remember that very well. IIRC it was called fuzz testing, and
> indeed it was controversial, for the reasons Bill McKeeman discusses
> in his paper. [1] On the one hand, compiler developers said, "nobody
> would ever write something like that--we can't waste our time on these
> issues when there are real bugs waiting to be fixed." On the other
> hand, some of the bugs that fuzz testing turned up provoked reactions
> such as, "OMG! THAT caused the compiler to crash?" I think the
> turning point was when fixing one of the fuzz testing bugs also fixed
> an obscure and hard-to-debug customer problem. Intel's C and Fortran
> compiler team has also used random testing technology.
>
Ah, very cool. The same approach has come into favor again recently. I've
dealt personally with https://github.com/google/syzkaller, which is a
kernel fuzzer that generates random inputs to system calls and detects e.g.
panics. It's a neat approach.
- Dan C.
> [1] https://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/dtj/vol10num1/vol10num1art9.pdf
>
> -Paul W.
>
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2020-05-05 22:00 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 26+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2020-05-01 20:48 [TUHS] " Paul Ruizendaal
2020-05-01 21:57 ` Clem Cole
2020-05-02 9:10 ` Paul Ruizendaal
2020-05-02 16:04 ` Clem Cole
2020-05-01 23:05 ` Jeremy C. Reed
2020-05-02 0:49 ` Noel Hunt
2020-05-02 1:22 ` Rob Pike
2020-05-02 3:49 ` Noel Hunt
2020-05-02 20:16 ` Paul Ruizendaal
2020-05-03 6:58 ` arnold
2020-05-03 16:13 ` Clem Cole
2020-05-03 16:53 ` Henry Bent
2020-05-03 17:06 ` Henry Bent
2020-05-03 17:13 ` Henry Bent
2020-05-03 20:26 ` Clem Cole
2020-05-05 0:22 ` [TUHS] DEC Compilers (was: " Win Treese
2020-05-05 17:36 ` Paul Winalski
2020-05-05 18:53 ` Dr Iain Maoileoin
2020-05-05 21:59 ` Dan Cross [this message]
2020-05-05 21:49 ` Henry Bent
2020-05-03 17:35 ` [TUHS] " Paul Winalski
2020-05-03 21:27 ` Paul Ruizendaal
2020-05-12 4:15 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-05-06 2:52 [TUHS] DEC Compilers (was: " Doug McIlroy
2020-05-06 15:53 Doug McIlroy
2020-05-06 20:21 ` Tim Rylance
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