Relational Debugging - Pinpointing Root Causes of Performance Problems
Explore a groundbreaking technique for performance debugging in this 15-minute conference talk from OSDI '23. Delve into the concept of relational debugging, a novel approach that automatically identifies root causes of performance issues by analyzing relations between fine-grained runtime events. Learn how this method overcomes limitations of existing techniques by focusing on relative performance measures rather than absolute predicates. Discover the practical implementation of relational debugging through Perspect, a tool that operates directly on x86 binaries. Examine the effectiveness of this approach through case studies involving challenging performance issues in Go runtime, MongoDB, Redis, and Coreutils. Gain insights into how relational debugging can significantly accelerate the debugging process, as demonstrated by a controlled user study showing at least a 10.87-fold improvement in debugging speed.