Improving System Functionality using Monitoring Processors

由于晶体管密度的增加和并行性的开发等结构上的进步，微处理器现在在原始处理能力上可以与超级计算机相媲美。 然而，存储系统的带宽和延迟是如此有限，以至于微处理器性能的提高往往导致系统整体性能的改善很少，与此同时，软件成本也在迅速增长。这项研究探索使用一些不断增加的硅真实的资产，以提供额外的功能。 该方法是将这些新晶体管的一部分专用于提供可编程监控硬件，以增强软件开发，使调试更有效，提高可靠性并提供运行时安全性。 在监控嵌入式系统的运行时保证和不变量方面，还可以找到其他应用。举一个具体的例子，这种方法可以解决软件中出现的与指针相关的缺陷，这些缺陷使系统变得不可靠，容易受到黑客攻击。 简单的辅助协处理器通过松散耦合（例如，通过L1高速缓存一致性总线）监视来自计算处理器的地址引用。 这种松散耦合降低了设计复杂性，避免了重新设计任何核心CPU的需要，并允许这种方法很容易添加到现有的设计中。 此外，该方法是补充静态编译器分析技术和研究扩展传统的分析，利用高效的运行时监控功能。

ABSTRACTProposal #0113418U of Cal DavisFarrens, MatthewMicroprocessors now rival supercomputers in raw processing power, thanks to increases in transistor densities and architectural advances such as the exploitation of parallelism. However, the bandwidth and latency of memory systems is so limited that increasing performance in the microprocessor often leads to little overall system improvement.At the same time that this is occurring, software costs are burgeoning. This research explores using some of the increasing silicon real estate to provide extra functionality. The approach is to dedicate a portion of these new transistors to provide programmable monitoring hardware to enhance software development, make debugging more efficient, increase reliability and provide run-time security. Additional applications may be found in monitoring run-time guarantees and invariants for embedded systems.Taking a specific example, this approach can address pointer-related defects occurring in software which render systems unreliable and vulnerable to hackers. A simple, auxiliary co-processor monitors address references from a compute processor via a loose coupling (e.g. via the L1 cache coherence bus). This loose coupling reduces design complexity and avoids the need for any core CPU redesign and allows this approach to be readily added to existing designs. Furthermore, the approach is complementary to static compiler analysis techniques and the research extends conventional analysis to exploit efficient run-time monitoring capabilities.