ARM® is the prevalent processor architecture for embedded and mobile applications. For the smartphones, it is the processor for which software applications are running, whether the platform is with Apple’s iOS or Google’s Android. Software operations under these platforms are prone to semantic gap, which refers to potential difference between intended operations described in software and actual...

We introduce a postgraduate coursework program where students learn to use network processors. This is part of the Master’s curriculum for Osaka University’s Graduate School of Information Science and Technology (IST). First we briefly explain the Intel IXP1200 network processor and its evaluation kit, the ENP-2505, which are used in this program. We next describe the content of the network-pro...

We present a framework for an efficient instruction-level machine simulator which can be used with existing software tools to develop and analyze programs for a proposed processor architecture. The simulator exploits similarities between the instruction sets of the emulated machine and the host machine to provide fast simulation. Furthermore, existing program development tools on the host machi...

This paper discusses an approach for supporting SPMD (single-program, multiple-data) execution of programs with pointer-based data structures on distributed-memory machines. Through a combination of language design and new compilation techniques, static and dynamic implicit parallelism present in sequential programs based upon pointer-based data structures is exploited. Language support is prov...

Object code is a program of a processor language and can be directly executed on a machine. Program verification constructs a formal proof that a program correctly implements its specification. Verifying object code therefore ensures that the program which is to be executed on a machine is correct. However, the nature of processor languages makes it difficult to specify and reason about object ...

The Bird-Meertens formalism (BMF) of higher-order functions over lists is a mathematical framework supporting formal derivation of algorithms from functional speciications. This paper reports results of a case study on the systematic use of BMF in the process of parallel program development. We develop a parallel program for polynomial multiplication, starting with a straightforward mathematica...

Processor obsolescence is a serious maintenance problem for long-lived embedded control systems. A practical solution is to interpose an emulator program between the ‘legacy’ software and a replacement processor, so that the old code can be reused on the new machine. Unfortunately, no verification techniques exist for proving that the resulting system preserves the original system’s functional ...