Using the Valgrind Framework to Build a Persistent Memory Error Detector by Krzysztof Czurylo
Channel: The Linux Foundation
Date: 2017-04-04

Using the Valgrind Framework to Build a Persistent Memory Error Detector - Krzysztof Czurylo & Tomasz Kapela, Intel

Valgrind is a popular, multi-platform instrumentation framework for building dynamic binary analysis tools. In the Linux community, it is mostly known and valued for a few popular tools: Memcheck - a memory-management error detector, and Helgrind/DRD - two threading bugs detectors.
In this talk, we will present a new tool built on Valgrind - Pmemcheck - yet another memory error detector designed specifically to detect problems with Persistent Memory programming.
First, we will talk about the motivation for creating new error detector and the reasons for which we have chosen Valgrind framework to create Pmemecheck. We will also shed some light on typical issues related to the use of byte-addressable persistent memory. Finally, we will present an in-depth view on the Pmemcheck design and the changes we have made to the core part of Valgrind to support persistent memory.

About Krzysztof Czurylo
Krzysztof Czurylo is a Software Architect at Intel, having over 15 years of experience in databases, networking/telecommunication and 3D graphics (OpenGL). For the last two years, he is mostly focused on persistent memory programming models and algorithms providing effective and fail-safe usage of Non-Volatile Memory, as well as adoption of the existing software to use persistent memory. Currently, he is also responsible for Non-Volatile Memory Library architecture (http://pmem.io).

About Tomasz Kapela
Tomasz Kapela is a software engineer with 6 years of experience in the industry. He majored in radio communication systems from the Gdansk University of Technology in 2010. Since then he worked as a software developer and systems designer in Radmor, where he designed and implemented military grade MANETs. Since 2014 he is working at Intel Technology Poland, where he is focusing on software solutions for the next-gen non-volatile memory.