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RE: UndoDB's performance


> -----Original Message-----
> From: gdb-owner@sourceware.org 
> [mailto:gdb-owner@sourceware.org] On Behalf Of Greg Law
> Sent: Tuesday, December 15, 2009 4:12 AM
> To: Sean Chen
> Cc: Hui Zhu; gdb@sourceware.org
> Subject: Re: UndoDB's performance
> 
> Sean Chen wrote:
> > On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 11:56 AM, Hui Zhu 
> <teawater@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> I did some test but its speed close to prec.  Some others 
> was better.
> >> Maybe it have some special performance technology for some code.
> >>
> >> Hui
> >>
> >> On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 10:40, Sean Chen 
> <sean.chen1234@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 11:07 PM, Hui Zhu 
> <teawater@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>> Try undodb.
> >>>>
> >>>> On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 21:18, Sean Chen 
> <sean.chen1234@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>> On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 7:14 PM, Hui Zhu 
> <teawater@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>>> gdb-7 reverse debugging accelerator.
> >>>>>> Regular gdb-7 reverse runs apps          40,000x       
>          slower
> >>>>>> UndoDB+gdb-7 reverse runs apps           1.7x          
>   slower!
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Are you really do some try?
> >>>>>> I suggest you do some test on it.  :)
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Thanks,
> >>>>>> Hui
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 23:34, Sean Chen 
> <sean.chen1234@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>>>> On UndoDb's website, I saw the following ad.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Regular gdb-7 reverse runs apps 40,000x slower
> >>>>>>> UndoDB+gdb-7 reverse runs apps 1.7x slower!
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> In my experiment, gdb-7 reverse does run apps more 
> than 20,000x
> >>>>>>> slower. How does UndoDB improve the performance so 
> much without a
> >>>>>>> simulator and without record? Below is its 
> self-introduction on the
> >>>>>>> website. UndoDB's "snapshot-and-replay" technique 
> stores periodic
> >>>>>>> copy-on-write snapshots of the application and only 
> non-deterministic
> >>>>>>> inputs (system calls, thread-switches, shared memory 
> reads, etc).
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Are there any obvious disadvantages in UndoDB? I 
> tried to search
> >>>>>>> UndoDB in the archive of the mailing list, however, 
> little discussion
> >>>>>>> is found.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> --
> >>>>>>> Best Regards,
> >>>>>>> Sean Chen
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>> That's UndoDB's ad on its website.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> In my experiment, gdb-7 reverse runs apps about 22,000x slower.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> --
> >>>>> Best Regards,
> >>>>> Sean Chen
> >>>>>
> >>> I also tried UndoDB, and it is really fast. So I am sure they are
> >>> using different strategy.
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> Best Regards,
> >>> Sean Chen
> >>>
> > 
> > It might not use process record technique like your design.
> > 
> > Below is its self-introduction on its website.
> > UndoDB's "snapshot-and-replay" technique stores periodic 
> copy-on-write
> > snapshots of the application and only non-deterministic 
> inputs (system
> > calls, thread-switches, shared memory reads, etc).
> > 
> > Any comments?
> 
> Yes, I can confirm that's what we do.  We did it that way 
> (and generally 
> tried very hard) to get the best record-time performance.  To 
> answer the 
> OP, the downside is replay mode performance, namely stepping 
> backwards, 
> will be worse because you have a lot more work to do.  You 
> also need to 
> store the snapshots, although as noted, copy-on-write can 
> mitigate this 
> cost.

In February 09, I had run a couple of tests.  Here are the results,
but keep in mind they are almost a year old and that things might
have changed since then.

I had a very simple program with a recursive call that contained a printf.
I ran the program with and without recording with different depth
of recursion.  No replaying.  Two results below.

GDB with *no* recording: 1.35 seconds
GDB with recording (PRecord): 223 seconds (165 times slower)
UndoDB: 2.17 seconds (1.6 times slower)

GDB with *no* recording: 0.63 seconds
GDB with recording (PRecord): 107 seconds (169 times slower)
UndoDB: 0.74 seconds (1.17 times slower)

As Greg explains, I did notice that in some cases, when actually
doing back stepping, UndoDB would take a long time to
perform an operation.  Also, going forward again was sometimes
very slow with UndoDb.

PRecord was better at replaying and had the extremely nice
feature of allowing you to change memory and resume
execution.

Marc


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