Title: Function-level profiling for embedded software with QEMU

Authors: T. Van Dung; Ittetsu Taniguchi; Takuji Hieda; Hiroyuki Tomiyama

Addresses: Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Ritsumeikan University, Shiga, Japan ' College of Science and Engineering, Ritsumeikan University, Shiga, Japan ' Department of Advanced Information Technology, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan ' College of Science and Engineering, Ritsumeikan University, Shiga, Japan

Abstract: Function-level profiling is crucial for optimised embedded software which has severe constraints on hardware resources, low power consumption, real-time responses, and so on. In this work, we provide a fast and reliable solution by utilising an instruction set simulator named QEMU and creating an analyser tool. We developed a tracing module inside the simulator to trace execution information of software at run-time and record it in a log file. Our implementation takes advantage of the dynamic binary translation of QEMU to keep its speed fast and use an analyser tool to analyse the log file and create a function-level profile. We implemented our solution methodology for the ARM architecture, and evaluated it with various kinds of embedded applications.

Keywords: function-level profiling; embedded systems; QEMU; dynamic binary translation; DBT; ARM architecture; instruction set simulator.

DOI: 10.1504/IJES.2015.069998

International Journal of Embedded Systems, 2015 Vol.7 No.2, pp.170 - 179

Received: 10 Jan 2014
Accepted: 28 Jun 2014
Published online: 22 Jun 2015 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article