Facilitating the Bootstrapping of a New ISA
Facilitating the Bootstrapping of a New ISA
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DOI：
10.1145/3589610.3596282
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发表时间：
2023-06
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Abigail Mortensen;Scott Pomerville;D. Whalley;Soner Önder;Gang-Ryung Uh
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文献类型：
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作者：
Abigail Mortensen;Scott Pomerville;D. Whalley;Soner Önder;Gang-Ryung Uh
新指令集架构 (ISA) 的实现是一项艰巨的任务，需要对系统软件（例如编译器、汇编器和链接器）进行重大修改。该任务还包括修改和验证功能和周期精确的模拟器，以促进新 ISA 下程序的性能评估。隔离这些软件组件中的错误变得极具挑战性，并且需要自动化和半自动化机制，因为编译基础设施和模拟基础设施都不可信任，因为双方都经过了大量修改。引导新的 ISA 在嵌入式系统中非常常见，因为通常不需要支持可执行文件的向后兼容性，因此嵌入式 ISA 的种类更加丰富。在本文中，我们介绍了我们已实施的工具和验证机制，以支持许多相关但不同的 ISA 的开发。我们为这些 ISA 开发系统软件和模拟器的工作表明，依赖于简单不变量的分步半自动化方法可以促进完整系统软件和模拟器基础设施的有效引导。
Implementation of a new instruction set architecture (ISA) is a non-trivial task that involves significant modifications to the system software, such as the compiler, the assembler, and the linker. This task also includes modifying and verifying functional and cycle accurate simulators to facilitate performance evaluation of programs under the new ISA. Isolating errors in these software components becomes extremely challenging and demands automated and semi-automated mechanisms since neither the compilation infrastructure nor the simulation infrastructure can be trusted as both parties have been heavily modified. Bootstrapping a new ISA is very common in embedded systems since there is a greater variety of embedded ISAs due to often not having a need to support backward compatibility of executables. In this paper, we present the tools and the verification mechanisms we have implemented to support the development of a number of related, but distinct ISAs. Our work in developing the system software and simulators for these ISAs demonstrate that a step-by-step semi-automated approach which relies on simple invariants can facilitate effective bootstrapping of the complete system software and the simulator infrastructure.