Analysis of Performance Overheads in DynamoRIO Binary Translator

Abstract

Dynamic binary translation is the process of translating instruction code from one architecture to another while it executes, i.e., dynamically. As modern applications are becoming larger, more complex and more dynamic, the tools to manipulate these programs are also becoming increasingly complex. DynamoRIO is one such dynamic binary translation tool that targets the most common IA-32 (a.k.a. x86) architecture on the most popular operating systems - Windows and Linux. DynamoRIO includes applications ranging from program analysis and understanding to profiling, instrumentation, optimization, improving software security, and more. DynamoRIO uses several optimization techniques like code caching, trace creation, optimized software technique to emulate indirect branch instructions, etc. to reduce the translation overhead and enhance program performance in comparison to native execution. However, even considering all of these optimization techniques, DynamoRIO still has the limitations of performance and memory usage, which restrict deployment scalability. The goal of this thesis is to break down the various aspects which contribute to the overhead burden and evaluate which factors directly contribute to this overhead. This thesis will discuss all of these factors in further detail. If the process can be streamlined, this application will become more viable for widespread adoption in a variety of areas. We have used industry standard MI benchmarks in order to evaluate in detail the amount and distribution of the overhead in DynamoRIO. Our statistics from the experiments show that DynamoRIO executes a large number of additional instructions when compared to the native execution of the application. Furthermore, these additional instructions are involved in building the basic blocks, linking, trace creation, and resolution of indirect branches, all of which in return have contributed to the frequent exiting of the code cache. We will discuss in detail all of these overheads, show statistics of instructions for each overhead and finally show the observations and analysis in this experiment.