Code coverage testing using hardware performance monitoring support

Code coverage analysis, the process of finding code exercised by a particular set of test inputs, is an important component of software development and verification. Most traditional methods of implementing code coverage analysis tools are based on program instrumentation. These methods typically incur high overhead due to the insertion and execution of instrumentation code, and are not deployable in many software environments. Hardware-based sampling techniques attempt to lower overhead by leveraging existing Hardware Performance Monitoring (HPM) support for program counter (PC) sampling. While PC-sampling incurs lower levels of overhead, it does not provide complete coverage information. This paper extends the HPM approach in two ways. First, it utilizes the sampling of branch vectors which are supported on modern processors. Second, compiler analysis is performed on branch vectors to extend the amount of code coverage information derived from each sample. This paper shows that al...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: AADEBUG
• Authors: Alex Shye, Matthew Iyer, Vijay Janapa Reddi, Daniel A. Connors
• Keywords: AADEBUG 2005, Branch Vectors, Code Coverage, Code Coverage Analysis, Software Engineering