Randomized testing within transactional execution

摘要

Task specific diagnostic controls are provided to facilitate the debugging of certain types of abort conditions. The diagnostic controls may be set to cause transactions to be selectively aborted, allowing a transaction to drive its abort handler routine for testing purposes. The controls include, for instance, a transaction diagnostic scope and a transaction diagnostic control. The transaction diagnostic scope indicates when the transaction diagnostic control is to be applied, and the transaction diagnostic control indicates whether transactions are to selectively aborted.

主权项

1. A computer system for controlling execution of transactions in a computing environment, said computer system comprising:
a memory; and a processor in communications with the memory, wherein the computer system is configured to perform a method, said method comprising:
initiating a transaction in a computing environment, the transaction effectively delaying committing transactional stores to main memory until completion of a selected transaction; anddetermining, by the processor, whether the transaction is to be aborted, the determining employing one or more controls of a control register used by the processor, the one or more controls to indicate whether transactions are to be randomly selected to be aborted for testing purposes, and wherein the control register comprises:
a transaction diagnostic control, wherein a first value of the transaction diagnostic control indicates transactions are not to be aborted based on the transaction diagnostic control, a second value of the transaction diagnostic control indicates each transaction is to be aborted based on the transaction diagnostic control, and a third value of the transaction diagnostic control indicates transactions are to be randomly selected to be aborted; anda transaction diagnostic scope to indicate whether the transaction diagnostic control is to be applied, wherein a first value of the transaction diagnostic scope indicates the transaction diagnostic control is to be applied based on the processor being in a problem state or a supervisor state, and a second value of the transaction diagnostic scope indicates the transaction diagnostic control is to be applied exclusive to the processor being in the problem state.