ITR/SY (CISE): Software Improvement Through Binary Rewriting

University Of Arizona, Tucson AZ

Investigators

Abstract

ABSTRACT Proposal #0113633 U of Arizona Andrews, Gregory A binary rewriting system is a software system that transforms a binary (executable) program into a different but functionally equivalent binary program. This project is developing binary rewriting techniques for flexible link-time and run-time code optimizations. The aim is to develop a unified binary rewriting infrastructure that is able to handle a wide variety of applications---sequential, parallel, distributed, and mobile---hardware architectures---from RISC to CISC---and optimization criteria---including execution time, power consumption, and communication bandwidth. Existing techniques for compile-time code optimization suffer from several limitations: they are unable to cross the dividing line between application code and libraries; they cannot take advantage of commonly encountered values along the critical path if such values cannot be guaranteed to be compile-time constants; and they typically focus only on improving execution time. To overcome these limitations, this project is investigating the following topics: (1) low-level cost models that can be used for cost-benefit analyses of different optimization metrics; (2) efficient computation of value profiles and their use for low-level code specialization; and (3) techniques that reduce the overheads associated with communication libraries used by parallel and mobile applications.