Addressing the challenges of DBT for the ARM architecture

ABSTRACT

Dynamic binary translation (DBT) can provide security, virtualization, resource management and other desirable services to embedded systems. Although DBT has many benefits, its run-time performance overhead can be relatively high. The run-time overhead is important in embedded systems due to their slow processor clock speeds, simple microarchitectures, and small caches. This paper addresses how to implement efficient DBT for ARM-based embedded systems, taking into account instruction set and cache/TLB nuances. We develop several techniques that reduce DBT overhead for the ARM. Our techniques focus on cache and TLB behavior. We tested the techniques on an ARM-based embedded device and found that DBT overhead was reduced by 54% in comparison to a general-purpose DBT configuration that is known to perform well, thus further enabling DBT for a wide range of purposes.

REFERENCES

• 1: Keith Adams , Ole Agesen, A comparison of software and hardware techniques for x86 virtualization, Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Architectural support for programming languages and operating systems, October 21-25, 2006, San Jose, California, USA
• 2: José A. Baiocchi , Bruce R. Childers , Jack W. Davidson , Jason D. Hiser, Reducing pressure in bounded DBT code caches, Proceedings of the 2008 international conference on Compilers, architectures and synthesis for embedded systems, October 19-24, 2008, Atlanta, GA, USA [doi>10.1145/1450095.1450114]
• 3: Jose Baiocchi , Bruce R. Childers , Jack W. Davidson , Jason D. Hiser , Jonathan Misurda, Fragment cache management for dynamic binary translators in embedded systems with scratchpad, Proceedings of the 2007 international conference on Compilers, architecture, and synthesis for embedded systems, September 30-October 03, 2007, Salzburg, Austria [doi>10.1145/1289881.1289898]
• 4: Vasanth Bala , Evelyn Duesterwald , Sanjeev Banerjia, Dynamo: a transparent dynamic optimization system, Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN 2000 conference on Programming language design and implementation, p.1-12, June 18-21, 2000, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
• 5: Giuseppe Desoli , Nikolay Mateev , Evelyn Duesterwald , Paolo Faraboschi , Joseph A. Fisher, DELI: a new run-time control point, Proceedings of the 35th annual ACM/IEEE international symposium on Microarchitecture, November 18-22, 2002, Istanbul, Turkey
• 6: Apala Guha and Kim Hazelwood and Mary Lou Soffa. Reducing exit stub memory consumption in code caches. Int'l. Conf. on High-Performance Embedded Architectures and Compilers. 2007.
• 7: Suhas Gupta , Pranay Pratap , Huzur Saran , S. Arun-Kumar, Dynamic code instrumentation to detect and recover from return address corruption, Proceedings of the 2006 international workshop on Dynamic systems analysis, May 23-23, 2006, Shanghai, China [doi>10.1145/1138912.1138926]
• 8: M. R. Guthaus , J. S. Ringenberg , D. Ernst , T. M. Austin , T. Mudge , R. B. Brown, MiBench: A free, commercially representative embedded benchmark suite, Proceedings of the Workload Characterization, 2001. WWC-4. 2001 IEEE International Workshop, p.3-14, December 02-02, 2001 [doi>10.1109/WWC.2001.15]
• 9: Kim Hazelwood , Artur Klauser, A dynamic binary instrumentation engine for the ARM architecture, Proceedings of the 2006 international conference on Compilers, architecture and synthesis for embedded systems, October 22-25, 2006, Seoul, Korea [doi>10.1145/1176760.1176793]
• 10: Jason D. Hiser , Daniel Williams , Wei Hu , Jack W. Davidson , Jason Mars , Bruce R. Childers, Evaluating Indirect Branch Handling Mechanisms in Software Dynamic Translation Systems, Proceedings of the International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization, p.61-73, March 11-14, 2007 [doi>10.1109/CGO.2007.10]
• 11: Wei Hu , Jason Hiser , Dan Williams , Adrian Filipi , Jack W. Davidson , David Evans , John C. Knight , Anh Nguyen-Tuong , Jonathan Rowanhill, Secure and practical defense against code-injection attacks using software dynamic translation, Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Virtual execution environments, June 14-16, 2006, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada [doi>10.1145/1134760.1134764]
• 12: Vladimir Kiriansky , Derek Bruening , Saman P. Amarasinghe, Secure Execution via Program Shepherding, Proceedings of the 11th USENIX Security Symposium, p.191-206, August 05-09, 2002
• 13: Maebe, J., Ronsse, Michiel, De Bosschere, K. DIOTA: Dynamic Instrumentation, Optimization and Transformation of Applications. Compendium of Workshops and Tutorials Held in conjunction with PACT'02. 2002.
• 14: Arkaitz Ruiz-Alvarez and Kim Hazelwood. Evaluating the Impact of Dynamic Binary Translation Systems on Hardware Cache Performance. IEEE Int'l. Symp. on Workload Characterization. 2008.
• 15: Kevin Scott, Naveen Kumar, Bruce Childers, Jack Davidson and Mary Lou Soffa. Overhead reduction techniques for software dynamic translation. Int'l. Parallel and Distributed Processing Symp. 2004.
• 16: K. Scott , N. Kumar , S. Velusamy , B. Childers , J. W. Davidson , M. L. Soffa, Retargetable and reconfigurable software dynamic translation, Proceedings of the international symposium on Code generation and optimization: feedback-directed and runtime optimization, March 23-26, 2003, San Francisco, California
• 17: Stacey Shogan , Bruce R. Childers, Compact Binaries with Code Compression in a Software Dynamic Translator, Proceedings of the conference on Design, automation and test in Europe, p.21052, February 16-20, 2004
• 18: Jim Smith , Ravi Nair, Virtual Machines: Versatile Platforms for Systems and Processes (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Architecture and Design), Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco, CA, 2005
• 19: Swaroop Sridhar , Jonathan S. Shapiro , Eric Northup , Prashanth P. Bungale, HDTrans: an open source, low-level dynamic instrumentation system, Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Virtual execution environments, June 14-16, 2006, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada [doi>10.1145/1134760.1220166]
• 20: Qiang Wu , Margaret Martonosi , Douglas W. Clark , Vijay Janapa Reddi , Dan Connors , Youfeng Wu , Jin Lee , David Brooks, Dynamic-Compiler-Driven Control for Microprocessor Energy and Performance, IEEE Micro, v.26 n.1, p.119-129, January 2006 [doi>2006-02-17 02:00:03.800]
• 21: Qiang Wu , Margaret Martonosi , Douglas W. Clark , V. J. Reddi , Dan Connors , Youfeng Wu , Jin Lee , David Brooks, A Dynamic Compilation Framework for Controlling Microprocessor Energy and Performance, Proceedings of the 38th annual IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture, p.271-282, November 12-16, 2005, Barcelona, Spain [doi>10.1109/MICRO.2005.7]
• 22: Shukang Zhou , Bruce R. Childers , Mary Lou Soffa, Planning for code buffer management in distributed virtual execution environments, Proceedings of the 1st ACM/USENIX international conference on Virtual execution environments, June 11-12, 2005, Chicago, IL, USA [doi>10.1145/1064979.1064994]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.3 SPECIAL-PURPOSE AND APPLICATION-BASED SYSTEMS
      Subjects: Real-time and embedded systems

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.4 Processors
          Subjects: Run-time environments; Code generation; Optimization; Incremental compilers; Interpreters; Compilers

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation, Measurement, Performance

Keywords:
arm, dynamic binary translation, virtualization