dettmer@uunet.UU.NET (Thomas Dettmer) (05/02/89)
Hi folks, I'm planning to build a mixed textual and graphical interface for a hardware simulator and it's interactive debugger (underlying language is DACAPO-III, a high level language near VHDL.) Maybe later a generator for such interfaces will be the goal. Most of the basic problems arising are language independent and will always appear visualizing the behavior of parallel processes with high communication rates (e.g. large transputer programs). Some of them are: - displaying the dataflow network and it's activity's - static and dynamic views on the single processes/architecture entitys and their activitys - focussing in such an environment Therefore I'm searching for references (basic and specilized) and any other help on the following topics: General: - State of the art in program visualization (static/dynamic) - State of the art in debugging concurrent, event driven programming languages - Standards for electronic engeneers for visualization of hardware and it's states (hope there are more than e. g. how to present an AND gate) Special: - parallel program visualization/event monitoring - graphical notations for describing the execution of concurrent programs - [Generation of] graphical interfaces for [debugging of] parallel processes Please answer per email. If there is much interest, I'll summarize the literature list. Thanks in advance for any help tom. PS: Can anybody tell me the result of the discussion about comp.lang.vhdl or something like that? ************************************************************************* Thomas Dettmer email: dettmer%unidocv@unido.uucp University of Dortmund Departement of Computer Science I Post Box 50 05 00 D-4600 Dortmund 50 FRG *************************************************************************
eugene@eos.arc.nasa.gov (Eugene Miya) (05/03/89)
I hope readers remember that more often then not, graphics terminals, workstations on a net (thin or thick wire) become synchronization bottlenecks when displaying cute little behavior displayers. Unless systems are correctly designed, they become yet-another-Heisenflop problem. This unintended side-effect never appears directly in code, is dependent on synchronous I/O, and is very insideous. Getting around cutesy displays is only one of the problems (particularly bad because they look so good to funding sources). Oh, the problem is obviously not as bad for smaller numbers of processors than larger numbers if explicit tokens are passed (right?). Also if monitoring software can selectively drop data (another risk). --eugene miya NASA Ames
dettmer@uunet.UU.NET (Thomas Dettmer) (05/12/89)
> In article 594 I wrote > ... Therefore I'm searching for references (basic and specilized) and > any other help on the following topics: > - State of the art in program visualization (static/dynamic) > - State of the art in debugging concurrent, event driven programming > languages > - Standards for electronic engeneers for visualization of hardware and > it's states (hope there are more than e. g. how to present an AND gate) > - parallel program visualization/event monitoring > - graphical notations for describing the execution of concurrent programs > - [Generation of] graphical interfaces for [debugging of] parallel processes > Please answer per email. If there is much interest, I'll summarize > the literature list. Some readers (US and UK) told, that my email adress was defect. Please send me bounced answers again to: dettmer@unidocv.uucp dettmer@unidocv.ls1.informatik.uni-dortmund.de Our postmaster said, this will work! Summary will follow in 1 or two weeks. Ciao and thanks tom. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- snail mail: Thomas Dettmer phone: +49-231 755 4825 University of Dortmund Departement of Computer Science I Post Box 50 05 00 D-4600 Dortmund 50 Federal Republic of Germany (West) email: dettmer@unidocv.uucp dettmer@unidocv.ls1.informatik.uni-dortmund.de -----------------------------------------------------------------------
dettmer@uunet.UU.NET (Thomas Dettmer) (05/23/89)
Hi, what follows is a summary of literature hints I got on my request about concurrent program visualisation (I'm still interested). There are no special articles of Proceedings specified, because most they include more than one interesting thing - the list would grow too big and I'm not the master for your choise. I could not read all until today, my time for the project is strictly limited at the moment. Naturally, the articles have some interesting literature lists also. Comments represent only my personal opinions. T. A. Cargill The Feel of Pi Proceedings of USENIX '86 Winter have not seen it yet, but seems to be interesting. see also: OOPSLA '86 Proceedings, September 1986 in ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 21, Number 11, November 1986 has some interesting articles OOPSLA '87 Proceedings, October 1987 in ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 23, Number 5, May 1988 only listed for completeness Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN and SIGOPS Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Debugging University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, Mai 1988 includes most good articles on this and related topics Wentong Cai Graphical Monitoring and Debugging of Parallel Systems University of Exeter, W177, GB Exeter, Januar 1989 and Wentong Cai, Stephen Turner Highly Transparent Monitoring of Parallel Systems using 'Logical Clocks' University of Exeter, R168, GB Exeter, Januar 1989 interesting for synchronized debugging, less for visalisation (they will take about 3 pound sterling) ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 24, Number 4, April 1989 again very interesting articles There was a tip to look for J. E. Cuny in INSPEC, I couldn't find her (?). Another interesting work on the topic seems to be PARET, an integrated Visual tool for study of parallel systems. I will get an article from the authors soon, so for information send mail to me or the author: John Edmark AT&T Bell Laboratories Room 4G-626 Crawfords Corner Road Holmdel, NJ 07733 EMAIL: edmark@vax135.att.com Related Work Andreas M\:*unzner, Joseph Thobe EXDIS - Computer Aided Simulation Analysis [in german] from University of Hannover GMD-Studien Nr. 155, 4. E.I.S.-Workshop, Bonn, Februar 89 R. Buschke, K. Lagemann SIMUEVA; parts 3 and 4: From error indication to error cause [in german] from University of Hamburg GMD-Studien Nr. 155, 4. E.I.S.-Workshop, Bonn, Februar 89 Thank's for any help. For those who asked fo special things or email answers - it will arrive the next day's, otherwise your mail was lost. If somebody is further interested - send mail (see below). Ciao tom. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- snail mail: phone: Thomas Dettmer +49-231 755 4825 University of Dortmund Departement of Computer Science I Post Box 50 05 00 D-4600 Dortmund 50 Federal Republic of Germany (West) email: dettmer@unidocv.uucp dettmer@unidocv.ls1.informatik.uni-dortmund.de -----------------------------------------------------------------------