US researchers have unveiled details of a technique designed to speed up the debugging of complex computer programs by automatically "chipping" the software into smaller pieces.

Software engineers are then able to isolate and fix bugs without having to trawl through the entire code base, according to researchers at the University of California Davis.

The boffins explained that, to isolate a bug in the code, programmers often break it into smaller pieces until they can pin down the error in a smaller stretch that is easier to manage.

The aim of the new project, conducted by UC Davis graduate student Chad Sterling and professor of computer science Ron Olsson, was to automate this process. "It is really tedious to go through thousands of lines of code," said Olsson.

The Chipper tools developed by Sterling and Olsson chip off pieces of software while preserving the program structure.

"The pieces have to work after they are cut down," explained Olsson. "You cannot just cut in mid-sentence."