A Binary Translation System for Multithreaded Processors and its Preliminary Evaluation

Thread level parallelism (TLP) is a key technology to coming generation of high performance processors. Although it provides higher processing capability, the loss of compatibility with existing processors is a crucial issue. This research is motivated by the following two points: (1) TLP requires multithread programming which is rather di cult for ordinary programmers, or complexed compilation technologies that can exploit multithread parallelism, and (2) existing binary codes should be executed e ciently on multithreaded processors. In this paper, we rst propose a binary translation system, that translates existing binary codes to multithreaded ones and optimizes them dynamically during execution. The system inputs the original binary codes and translates them to internal RTL representation. It analyzes the structure of the program and applies multithreading to loop bodies in a thread pipelining manner. A pilot binary translator, that is a part of the proposed system, was built for the sake of preliminary evaluation. Evaluation results illustrate e ectiveness of the system.