Thread Checker finds a class of bugs that can only exist in parallel programming, Reinders said. These include data race issues, in which one thread computes something and another thread uses the results, and deadlocks in threads. "Both of them happen because of using locking improperly," Reinders said.

Data race bugs are "particularly insidious" because they may properly work some times but not other times, Reinders said.

At the Roxio division of Sonic Solutions, Intel's tools have been used to deal with data race issues. "We were able to use the tools to try to diagnose some threading [issues] and they basically helped us track down some things we might not have found without very strict code reviews," said Dan Staheli, development team lead at Roxio, which builds multimedia software. Staheli said he did not use the tools himself but his team did.

Thread Profiler 3.0, meanwhile, shows what each thread is doing and whether a thread is doing useful work or sitting idle. Developers get insight into how application threads interact and parallel performance issues are pinpointed.

Threading Building Blocks 1.0 and Thread Profiler have a suggested price of US$299. Thread Checker 3.0 is priced at $999, or $499 for a version supporting Linux with just the command line interface.