Code Cloning Tracing: A New Approach to Trace Collection
Thierry Lafage, André Seznec, Erven Rohou, François Bodin · 1998
: Trace-driven simulation is a widely used technique to evaluate microprocessor architecture and/or memory hierarchy performance. However, software trace collection induces significant execution slowdown. As on-line simulation induces an even more disastrous slowdown, simulating applications incurring trillions of instructions can not be considered without trace sampling. Therefore continuous software trace collection of the complete workload of a desktop computer cannot be envisaged. The Code Cloning Tracing method is aimed at allowing trace collection on time consuming applications. Sampling the execution is performed through a static duplication and instrumentation of the source code. A first copy of the code is nearly identical to the original code and will execute most of the time. The second code copy is further instrumented by the trace user and will be parsimoniously executed in order to collect traces without slowing down too much the overall application. At execution time, s...