US Patent 7657792 Identifying race conditions involving asynchronous memory updates

A method of identifying race conditions in a computer program can include identifying a call to a selected function specifying a memory range. The selected function can cause data to be written to the memory range asynchronously. The method further can include spraying the memory range with a predetermined bit pattern and determining whether a detected write operation at least partially overwrites the predetermined bit pattern in the memory range. A race condition can be selectively indicated according to the determining step.