AN INVESTIGATION OF FUNCTIONAL AND RELIABILITY TESTING FOR PARALLEL SOFTWARE

WITH ADVANTAGES IN VLSI AND PARALLEL PROCESSING TECHNOLOGY, IT IS NOW FEASIBLE TO BUILD COMPLEX COMPUTERS WITH ARCHITECTURES RANGING FROM COARSE-GRAIN TO FINE-GRAIN PARALLEL SYSTEMS. HOWEVER, THE PRODUCTION OF HIGH QUALITY SOFTWARE MATCHING THE HIGH PERFORMANCE POTENTIAL OF THESE PARALLEL ARCHITECTURES HAS PROVED TO BE VERY DIFFICULT, DUE TO THE INSUFFICIENCY OF SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENTS, AND, IN PARTICULAR, PARALLEL SOFTWARE TESTING TOOLS. CLEARLY, THERE IS AN URGENT NEED FOR SOFTWARE TOOLS FOR FUNCTIONAL AND RELIABILITY TESTING OF PARALLEL SOFTWARE. HERE, WE PROPOSE TO PERFORM A REVIEW OF FUNCTIONAL AND RELIABILITY TESTING TECHNIQUES FOR CONVENTIONAL SOFTWARE IN ORDER TO DEFINE POTENTIAL GENERALIZATIONS, IDENTIFY INNOVATIVE APPROACHES TO TESTING PARALLEL SOFTWARE EXPLOITING THE UNDERLYING HARDWARE REDUNDANCY, AND ANALYZE DEBUGGING AIDS ADDRESSING THE UNIQUE ATTRIBUTES OF PARALLEL PROGRAMMING ENVIRONMENTS. OUR PROPOSED STUDY INCLUDES THE PROOF-OF-CONCEPT DEMONSTRATIONS OF THE MORE PROMISING APPROACHES AND THE REQUIREMENTS DEFINITION OF A FULL-SCALE PROTOTYPE TOOL FOR TESTING PARALLEL SOFTWARE.