Intel Corporation

Jason M Agron

Koichi Yamada

Polychronis Xekalakis

Jiwei Lu

Youfeng Wu

Vineeth Mekkat

Girish Venkatasubramanian

Paul Caprioli

Jamison D Collins

Sebastian Winkel

Arvind Krishnaswamy

David J Sager

Matthew C Merten

Beeman C Strong

Jeffrey J Cook

Ruchira Sasanka

Cristiano L Pereira

Ethan Schuchman

Oleg Margulis

Jayaram Bobba

Palanivelrajan Rajan Shanmugavelayutham

Zhongying Zhang

Tyler N Sondag

Mark Dechene

Rangeen Basu Roy Chowdhury

Abhinav Das

Hou-Jen Ko

Abhik Sarkar

Palanivelra Shanmugavelayutham

Gisle Dankel

An embodiment of an apparatus may comprise a memory to store configuration information, an instruction decoder to decode an instruction having one or more fields including an opcode field, and circuitry communicatively coupled to the instruction decoder and the memory, the circuitry to determine if an opcode value in the opcode field of the instruction corresponds to an altered opcode value in the stored configuration information that correlates one or more altered opcode values with respective original opcode values, and, if so determined, decode the instruction based on one of the original opcode values correlated to the altered opcode value in the stored configuration information. Other embodiments are disclosed and claimed.

ISA opcode parameterization and opcode space layout randomization

A processor comprising an instruction execution circuit to execute a second code stored at a second address of a memory, wherein the second code is translated from a first code stored at a first address of the memory and a translation table (TT) controller coupled to a translation table to store a TT entry comprising a mapping between the first address and the second address and an attribute field comprising an attribute value associated with execution of the second code, wherein the TT controller is to monitor execution of the second code by the instruction execution circuit and update, based on a performance metric of the execution, the attribute value of the TT entry.

Management of the untranslated to translated code steering logic in a dynamic binary translation based processor

A method for tracing software code executing on a core of a processor is described. The method includes generating a set of packets for a trace packet stream based on a main cycle counter, which maintains a count of cycles elapsing in the core since a packet was emitted into the trace packet stream, and a commit cycle counter, which maintains a cycle count in the core since the last commit operation, wherein the generating comprises (1) storing a value of the main cycle counter in the commit cycle counter in response to detecting a commit operation and (2) storing a value of the commit cycle counter in the main cycle counter in response to detecting an abort in the core; and emitting the set of packets from the processor into the trace packet stream for tracing execution of the software code.

Trace management during aborted speculative operations

Systems, methods, and apparatuses for last branch record support are described. In an embodiment, a hardware processor core comprises a hardware execution unit to execute a branch instruction, at least two last branch record (LBR) registers to store a source and destination information of a branch taken during program execution, wherein an entry in a LBR register is to include an encoding of the branch, a write bit array to indicate which LBR register is architecturally correct, an architectural bit array to indicate when an LBR register has been written, and a plurality of top of stack pointers to indicate which LBR register in a LBR register stack is to be written.

Systems, methods, and apparatuses for last branch record support compatible with binary translation and speculative execution using an architectural bit array and a write bit array

Methods and apparatuses relating to preventing the execution of a modified instruction. In one embodiment, an apparatus includes a hardware binary translator to translate an instruction to a translated instruction, and a consistency hardware manager to prevent execution of the translated instruction by a hardware processor on detection of a modification to a virtual to physical address mapping of the instruction after the translation.

Apparatuses and methods to prevent execution of a modified instruction

An apparatus and method for a dual return stack buffer (RSB) for use in binary translation systems. For example, one embodiment of a processor comprises: a dual return stack buffer (DRSB) comprising a native RSB and an extended RSB (XRSB), the dual RSB to be used within a binary translation execution environment in which guest call-return instruction sequences are translated to native call-return instruction sequences to be executed directly by the processor; the native RSB to store native return addresses associated with the native call-return instruction sequences; and the XRSB to store emulated return addresses associated with the guest call-return instruction sequences, wherein each native return address stored in the RSB is associated with an emulated return address stored in the XRSB.

Apparatus and method for efficient call/return emulation using a dual return stack buffer

Methods and apparatuses relate to emulating architectural performance monitoring in a binary translation system. In one embodiment, a processor includes an architectural performance counter to maintain an architectural value associated with instruction execution, a register to store the architectural value of the architectural performance counter, binary translation logic to embed an architectural value from the architectural performance counter into a stream of translated instructions having a transactional code region and to store the architectural value into the register, and an execution unit to execute the transactional code region of the stream of translated instructions. The binary translation logic is configured to add the architectural value from the register to the architectural performance counter upon completion of the transactional code region of the stream of translated instructions. In one embodiment, a binary translation system overcomes software incompatibilities by using microarchitectural support to transparently and accurately emulate architectural performance counter behavior.

Apparatus and method for architectural performance monitoring in binary translation systems

A processing device including a first shadow register, a second shadow register, and an instruction execution circuit, communicatively coupled to the first shadow register and the second shadow register, to receive a sequence of instructions comprising a first local commit marker, a first global commit marker, and a first register access instruction referencing an architectural register, speculatively execute the first register access instruction to generate a speculative register state value associated with a physical register, responsive to identifying the first local commit marker, store, in the first shadow register, the speculative register state value, and responsive to identifying the first global commit marker, store, in the second shadow register, the speculative register state value.

Hybrid atomicity support for a binary translation based microprocessor

In one implementation, a processing device is provided that includes a memory to store instructions and a processor core to execute the instructions. The processor core is to receive a sequence of instructions reordered by a binary translator for execution. A first load of the sequence of instructions is identified. The first load references a memory location that stores a data item to be loaded. An occurrence of a second load is detected. The second load to access the memory location subsequent to an execution of the first load instruction. A protection field in the first load is enabled based on the detected occurrence of the second load. The enabled protection field indicates that the first load is to be checked for an aliasing associated with the memory location with respect to a subsequent store instruction. The second load is eliminated based on the enabled of the protection field.

Supporting binary translation alias detection in an out-of-order processor

In one example a processor includes a region formation engine to identify a region of code for translation from a guest instruction set architecture to a native instruction set architecture. The processor also includes a binary translator to translate the region of code. The region formation engine is to perform aggressive region formation, which includes forming a region across a boundary of a return instruction. The translated region of code is to prevent a side entry into the translated region of code at a translated return target instruction included in the translated region of code. In more specific examples, performing aggressive region formation includes a region formation grow phase and a region formation cleanup phase. In the grow phase priority may be given to growing complete paths from a call target to a corresponding return. The region formation cleanup phase may comprise eliminating call targets that are not reachable.

Optimized call-return and binary translation

Various embodiments are generally directed to techniques to detect a return-oriented programming (ROP) attack by verifying target addresses of branch instructions during execution. An apparatus includes a processor component, and a comparison component for execution by the processor component to determine whether there is a matching valid target address for a target address of a branch instruction associated with a translated portion of a routine in a table comprising valid target addresses. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

Techniques for detecting return-oriented programming

Apparatus and method for detecting and recovering from incorrect memory dependence speculation in an out-of-order processor are described herein. For example, one embodiment of a method comprises: executing a first load instruction; detecting when the first load instruction experiences a bad store-to-load forwarding event during execution; tracking the occurrences of bad store-to-load forwarding event experienced by the first load instruction during execution; controlling enablement of an S-bit in the first load instruction based on the tracked occurrences; generating a plurality of load operations responsive to an enabled S-bit in first load instruction, wherein execution of the plurality of load operations produces a result equivalent to that from the execution of the first load instruction.

Method and apparatus for recovering from bad store-to-load forwarding in an out-of-order processor

Technologies for partial binary translation on multi-core platforms include a shared translation cache, a binary translation thread scheduler, a global installation thread, and a local translation thread and analysis thread for each processor core. On detection of a hotspot, the thread scheduler first resumes the global thread if suspended, next activates the global thread if a translation cache operation is pending, and last schedules local translation or analysis threads for execution. Translation cache operations are centralized in the global thread and decoupled from analysis and translation. The thread scheduler may execute in a non-preemptive nucleus, and the translation and analysis threads may execute in a preemptive runtime. The global thread may be primarily preemptive with a small non-preemptive nucleus to commit updates to the shared translation cache. The global thread may migrate to any of the processor cores. Forward progress is guaranteed. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

Binary translation for multi-processor and multi-core platforms

A mechanism for tracking the control flow of instructions in an application and performing one or more optimizations of a processing device, based on the control flow of the instructions in the application, is disclosed. Control flow data is generated to indicate the control flow of blocks of instructions in the application. The control flow data may include annotations that indicate whether optimizations may be performed for different blocks of instructions. The control flow data may also be used to track the execution of the instructions to determine whether an instruction in a block of instructions is assigned to a thread, a process, and/or an execution core of a processor, and to determine whether errors have occurred during the execution of the instructions.

Using control flow data structures to direct and track instruction execution

In one embodiment, a processor includes a front end unit to fetch and decode an instruction. The front end unit includes a first random number generator to generate a random value responsive to a profileable event associated with the instruction. The processor further includes a profile logic to collect profile information associated with the instruction responsive to a sample signal, where the sample signal is based on at least a portion of the random value. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

Growing community of inventors

San Jose, CA, United States of America

Jason M Agron