Binary Translation Using Peephole Superoptimizers

We present a new scheme for performing binary translation that produces code comparable to or better than existing binary translators with much less engineering effort. Instead of hand-coding the translation from one instruction set to another, our approach automatically learns translation rules using superoptimization techniques. We have implemented a PowerPC-x86 binary translator and report results on small and large computeintensive benchmarks. When compared to the native compiler, our translated code achieves median performance of 67% on large benchmarks and in some small stress tests actually outperforms the native compiler. We also report comparisons with the open source binary translator Qemu and a commercial tool, Apple's Rosetta. We consistently outperform the former and are comparable to or faster than the latter on all but one benchmark.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: OSDI
• Authors: Sorav Bansal, Alex Aiken
• Keywords: Binary Translation, Binary Translator Qemu, Operating System, OSDI 2008, PowerPC-x86 Binary Translator