HPCBugBase: an experience base for HPC defects

We present the design and implementation of HPCBugBase, an experience base for high performance computing (HPC) software defects. Our goal is to accumulate empirical knowledge about commonly occurring defects in HPC codes using an incremental approach. This knowledge is structured so that HPC practitioners such as programmers and tool builders can use it to reduce debugging costs, as well as provide feedback which becomes incorporated into the system. By building the experience base, we expect to help the process of making explicit the knowledge about recurring defects that otherwise cannot be shared. The current system is built on a Wiki system, which allows incremental accumulation of data at various levels of abstraction. We implement additional analysis functions that do not exist in a generic Wiki system as custom plug-ins. We have populated the system with data collected from software engineering studies from the DARPA High Productivity Computer Systems Project.