Patent ID: 8479173

Claim:
A method, in a multi-threaded multiprocessor data processing system, for creating one or more irritator threads on one or more processor cores, the method comprising: generating non-irritator thread code for execution by a non-irritator thread of the multi-threaded multiprocessor data processing system; generating irritator thread code for execution by one or more irritator threads of the multi-threaded multiprocessor data processing system, wherein the non-irritator thread code is different from the irritator thread code; wherein the irritator thread loop has multiple iterations and the non-irritator thread is a random or a controlled instruction stream; instantiating the non-irritator thread to execute the non-irritator thread code; instantiating the one or more irritator threads to execute the irritator thread code; determining whether the non-irritator thread has finished execution of the entire instruction stream of the non-irritator thread code; and responsive to the non-irritator thread finishing execution of the entire instruction stream of the non-irritator thread code, performing an operation to terminate the execution of the irritator thread code by the one or more irritator threads, wherein the irritator thread code is restricted such that the irritator thread code does not cause any unexpected exceptions, does not modify any of memory that is read by the non-irritator thread, does not modify any core level register, or that any architected results of executing the irritator thread code goes undefined.