Modeling mutation on a vector processor

Mutation analysis is a software testing methodology designed to substantiate the correctness of a program P. The mutation approach is to induce syntactically correct changes in P, thereby creating a set of mutant programs. The goal of a tester is to construct a set of test data T that distinguishes the output of P( T ) from that of all mutant programs. Test data sensitive enough to distinguish al1 mutant programs is deemed adequate to infer the probable correctness of P. We propose an algorithm designed to exploit the architecture of a vector processor like the Cyber 205 or Cray X/MP. The algorithm manages the simultaneous execution of multiple mutant FORTRAN 77 programs. This is accomplished by viewing the execution of these mutants as a sequence of vector instructions. The algorithm promises potential to greatly increase the performance of a mutation based testing system, as well as points towards a general method of simultaneous program execution against multiple data sets.