DEBUGGING PARALLEL PROGRAMS USING SOUND

Portraying the behavior of parallel programs can be done in a variety of ways. One way is to generate a graphical display related to the program's behavior so that a user can visualize what happens during the program's execution. As an alternative to visualization, auralization can also be used to portray the behavior of parallel programs. This paper explores how sound can be used to depict different events that take place during a parallel program's execution. In particular, the discussion is focused on distributed-memory parallel programs. Three mappings of execution behavior to sound were studied. The first mapping is related to process communication in a distributed-memory parallel program. The second mapping tracks the load balance of the processors of a system. In the third mapping, the flows-of-control of the parallel processes are mapped to related sounds.