Research challenge:

Future heterogeneous multi-core systems will not be able to automatically offer binary compatibility to applications making it harder to develop applications that will run on a wide range of machines. Furthermore, several applications running on a large scale multi-core could cause a substantial performance impact on each other. Virtualization is key to solve these problems. It is used to do resource management, to dynamically adapt and optimize applications, to secure applications, to deal with compatibility problems, to increase reliability, availability and versatility… The basic technique used in virtualization is binary translation.

Resources

• Presentations from the Barcelona cluster meeting (June 2008)
• Tools developed/maintained by cluster members
• Presentations from the kick-off meeting (January 2008)

Initial research topics:

• Static binary translation (at link time or at post-link time)
  
  • Scaling compiler algorithms to whole programs
  • Cross-ISA optimizations in heterogeneous multi-cores
  • Cross-boundary optimization
  • Applications of static binary translation: profiling, code obfuscation, code diversification, interactive optimization
• Dynamic binary translation
  
  • Virtual machines or platform virtualization
  • Dynamic optimization
  • Performance models for applications running in virtual machines
  • Security, resource management

Planned activities:

• Co-organization of Dagstuhl seminar on “Emerging Uses and Paradigms for Dynamic Binary Translation” (26-31/10-2008)
• Developing, maintaining and promoting the use of the Diablo static binary rewriting tool
• Create a European research community in binary translation and virtualization.

Coordinating partner: GENT