Researchers create "defibrillator" for stalled software

[Simon]

It's a common scenario: a co-worker starts screaming obscenities at a computer because it stalled in the middle of something important.

Researchers at MIT believe they have found a way to fix stalled software without losing work, which they're calling a defibrillator for hung applications.

One major cause of stalled software is infinite loops - when applications execute a single bit of code over and over again. To get out of that frustrating cycle, researchers have created a tool called Jolt that interrupts those infinite loops, pushing the software onto the next line of code.

Jolt looks out for infinite loops by monitoring memory use, taking a series of "snapshots" after each loop.

"The snapshots could be completely different," explains researcher Michael Carbin. "That can be an indicator that your program is computing. It may be doing something useful for you, so maybe you don't want to break out of this. But if it's not, and it has exactly the same state, then clearly it's stuck in an infinite loop."

Using Jolt, the researchers have restored five different programs, leaving them stable enough to save work and restart.

Read more: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/369076/researchers-create-defibrillator-for-stalled-software

[Rik]

It must have a high processor/memory overhead...