Evaluating Indirect Branch Handling Mechanisms in Software Dynamic Translation Systems

• Published in: Code Generation and Optimization: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization; 11-14 Mar. 2007 pp. 61 - 73
• Main Authors: Hiser, Jason D., Williams, Daniel, Hu, Wei, Davidson, Jack W., Mars, Jason, Childers, Bruce R.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC, USA IEEE Computer Society 11.03.2007; IEEE
• Series: ACM Conferences
• Subjects: Application software; Computer architecture; Computer science; Costs; Instruments; Lifting equipment; Mars; Protection; Software and its engineering > Software notations and tools > Compilers > Translator writing systems and compiler generators; Software systems; VLIW
• ISBN: 9780769527642; 0769527647
• DOI: 10.1109/CGO.2007.10

Software Dynamic Translation (SDT) systems are used for program instrumentation, dynamic optimization, security, intrusion detection, and many other uses. As noted by many researchers, a major source of SDT overhead is the execution of code which is needed to translate an indirect branch's target address into the address of the translated destination block. This paper discusses the sources of indirect branch (IB) overhead in SDT systems and evaluates several techniques for overhead reduction. Measurements using SPEC CPU2000 show that the appropriate choice and configuration of IB translation mechanisms can significantly reduce the IB handling overhead. In addition, cross-architecture evaluation of IB handling mechanisms reveals that the most efficient implementation and configuration can be highly dependent on the implementation of the underlying architecture.