MIT Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

E E C S

Retargetting Techniques for Extended Programming Environment

Norman Ramsey
Dept of Computer Sciences, Purdue University

Thursday, March 21, 1996
2:15 PM (2:00 refreshments)
Room NE43-518
EECS Special Seminar

Abstract

Retargeting techniques for compilers are now well understood and widely applied. Other tools are another story. Assembly, linking, profiling and debugging software is needlessly machine-dependent. Lack of good retargeting techniques prevents routine application of technologies like dynamic compilation, linking, and loading, efficient conditional breakpoints for debugging, object-code instrumentation for analysis and testing, and more.

All these technologies have to work with representations of machine instructions that are fixed by the hardware. I will present some of my work on the New Jersey Machine-Code Toolkit, which lets programmers manipulate these representations symbolically instead of writing low-level bit-fiddling code. The toolkit is guided by short instruction-set specifications; machines like the MIPS R3000, the SPARC, and the Intel Pentium can be described in 130-500 lines. It makes it easier to write and retarget machine-dependent tools, reduces the probability of errors, and helps the tools run faster. The talk will emphasize the machine-description ideas that make the toolkit work.

Some of the work described in this talk was done jointly with Mary Fernandez of Princeton University.

HOST: Prof. Stephen Ward

URL of this page: http://www-eecs.mit.edu/AY95-96/events/34.html
Created: Mar 18, 1996 | Modified: Jun 25, 1997
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