Emulation is the practice of simulating one computer system on another. There are many methods of implementing an emulator. They exist on a performance continuum from simple interpretation to dynamic binary translation extended with various optimizations. Optimizations are diverse, including just in time compilation, large translation units, shadow stack, register mapping and many more. The goal of this thesis is to develop a high performance, portable emulator for the ARM v4 architecture without requiring substantial code analysis. This thesis describes the implementation of a dynamic binary translator translating to an intermediate language targeting a virtual machine. Targeting a virtual machine ensures that the emulator is portable. Optimizations implemented include forming large translation units and branch straightening in hot regions. The particular combination of translating to intermediate form for a virtual machine, and creating large translation units from hot regions does not seem to appear in the literature. The performance of the described dynamic binary translator exceeds the performance of an interpreter on the same platform by an order of magnitude. Code analysis was only used to straighten branches in hot regions. While many popular dynamic binary translation optimizations are not readily applicable when using a virtual machine target, the performance achieved shows that using virtual machine as translation target is viable method of implementing dynamic binary translator. / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/5602 |
| Date | 26 August 2014 |
| Creators | Wright, Patrick Andrew |
| Contributors | Horspool, R. Nigel, Serra, Micaela |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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