[Colloquium] Bogdan Stoica Candidacy Exam/Jun 7, 2024

[via Colloquium]

This is an announcement of Bogdan Stoica's Candidacy Exam.
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Candidate: Bogdan Stoica

Date: Friday, June 07, 2024

Time: 11 am CT

Remote Location: https://uchicago.zoom.us/j/94521183450?pwd=dUFaNFpkY2oyTndyOE05aGUwWVJ1QT09

Title: Insights and Tooling for Bug Finding at Scale

Abstract: Large-scale distributed systems are essential to the infrastructure of numerous applications and services. The rapid adoption of such systems however, introduces unprecedented scalability challenges related to availability, consistency, and concurrency, among others.

One emerging set of scale-related issues involves capacity bugs --- defects that surface when a system is reaching one or more of its limits while in operation. These bugs often lead to significant operational challenges, including system downtime and data loss. While latent in small-scale settings, capacity bugs surface as the system scales up. As such, they require focused studies to develop effective detection strategies.

This work aims to develop an understanding of the symptoms and root causes of capacity bugs, and propose tooling than can identify certain classes of such defects. While we initially explore capacity bugs at-large, we narrow our attention on retry logic and memory ordering bugs. Moreover, our proposed solutions revolve around three key themes: (1) developing fault injection techniques to simulate specific bug triggers, (2) re-purposing existing tests as bug-triggering inputs, and (3) leveraging large language models to support more robust code analysis.

Advisors: Shan Lu

Committee Members: Shan Lu, Haryadi Gunawi, Kexin Pei, and Suman Nath