CSR: Medium: Dynamic Binary Translation for a Retargetable and Behaviorally-Accurate Cross-Architecture Whole System Virtual Machine

CSR：中：可重定向且行为准确的跨架构整个系统虚拟机的动态二进制翻译

• 批准号: 1514444
• 负责人: Pen-Chung Yew
• 金额: $ 82.92万
• 依托单位: University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-09-01 至 2019-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1514444&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CSR; Medium; Dynamic; Binary; Translation

This project focuses on improving the performance, applicability and reliability of whole system virtualization. Whole system virtualization is an approach that allows the complete set of software from one kind of computer to run as if it were a single program on a different kind of computer without any change at the binary (machine code) level. In particular, it allows software to migrate among different machines from different vendors with different system upgrades in large data centers, or between mobile devices and more powerful servers to allow better power management, system reliability and overall performance enhancement. Whole system virtualization is also important in other applications such as software development and system security.Dynamic binary translation is the key enabling technology studied in this project. With dynamic binary translation, machine instructions in their binary form from one machine are translated to instructions for another machine with a different instruction set architecture, so software can run seamlessly across different platforms on either real or virtual machines. The project will result in a prototype using the open-source software QEMU as its front-end and LLVM as its back-end in a client-server environment with ARM-based clients and Intel x86-based servers. This prototype will provide a test bed to study several issues important to dynamic binary translation that supports whole system virtualization of multi-threaded codes on multi-core platforms. This project addresses several technology challenges as it goes from research discovery toward application. The first is to improve the performance of the translated multi-threaded code and to reduce the overheads incurred during the binary translation, in particular in a client-server environment. It also addresses the challenges related to migrating binary codes across machines with different memory consistency models, and addresses challenges to verifying the correctness of the translated code.

本课题的重点是提高整个系统虚拟化的性能、适用性和可靠性。整个系统虚拟化是一种方法，它允许一种类型的计算机中的整套软件像在另一种类型的计算机上运行的单个程序一样运行，而无需在二进制（机器代码）级别进行任何更改。特别是，它允许软件在大型数据中心中具有不同系统升级的不同供应商的不同机器之间迁移，或者在移动设备和更强大的服务器之间迁移，从而实现更好的电源管理、系统可靠性和整体性能增强。整个系统虚拟化在软件开发和系统安全等其他应用中也很重要。动态二进制翻译是本课题研究的关键使能技术。通过动态二进制转换，一台机器上二进制形式的机器指令被转换为另一台机器上具有不同指令集架构的指令，因此软件可以在真实机或虚拟机上的不同平台上无缝运行。该项目将产生一个原型，使用开源软件QEMU作为前端，LLVM作为后端，在基于arm的客户端和基于Intel x86的服务器的客户机-服务器环境中。这个原型将提供一个测试平台来研究动态二进制转换的几个重要问题，这些问题支持多核平台上多线程代码的整个系统虚拟化。该项目解决了从研究发现到应用的几个技术挑战。第一个目标是提高已翻译的多线程代码的性能，并减少二进制转换期间产生的开销，特别是在客户机-服务器环境中。它还解决了与跨具有不同内存一致性模型的机器迁移二进制代码相关的挑战，并解决了验证已翻译代码正确性的挑战。