Unicorn CPU emulator framework (ARM, AArch64, M68K, Mips, Sparc, X86)
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Emilio G. Cota cb92eea81a
target-arm: emulate aarch64's LL/SC using cmpxchg helpers
Emulating LL/SC with cmpxchg is not correct, since it can
suffer from the ABA problem. Portable parallel code, however,
is written assuming only cmpxchg--and not LL/SC--is available.
This means that in practice emulating LL/SC with cmpxchg is
a viable alternative.

The appended emulates LL/SC pairs in aarch64 with cmpxchg helpers.
This works in both user and system mode. In usermode, it avoids
pausing all other CPUs to perform the LL/SC pair. The subsequent
performance and scalability improvement is significant, as the
plots below show. They plot the throughput of atomic_add-bench
compiled for ARM and executed on a 64-core x86 machine.

Hi-res plots: http://imgur.com/a/JVc8Y

atomic_add-bench: 1000000 ops/thread, [0,1] range

18 ++---------+----------+---------+----------+----------+----------+---++
+cmpxchg +-E--+ + + + + + |
16 ++master +-H--+ ++
|| |
14 ++ ++
| | |
12 ++| ++
| | |
10 ++++ ++
8 ++E ++
|+++ |
6 ++ | ++
| | |
4 ++ | ++
| | |
2 +H++E+--- ++
+ | +E++----+E+---+--+E+----++E+------+E+------+E++----+E+---+--+E|
0 ++H-H----H-+-----H----+---------+----------+----------+----------+---++
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Number of threads

atomic_add-bench: 1000000 ops/thread, [0,2] range

18 ++---------+----------+---------+----------+----------+----------+---++
+cmpxchg +-E--+ + + + + + |
16 ++master +-H--+ ++
| | |
14 ++E ++
| | |
12 ++| ++
|+++ |
10 ++ | ++
8 ++ | ++
| | |
6 ++ | ++
| | |
4 ++ | ++
| +E+--- |
2 +H+ +E+-----+++ +++ +++ ---+E+-----+E+------+++
+++ + +E+---+--+E+----++E+------+E+--- ++++ +++ + +E|
0 ++H-H----H-+-----H----+---------+----------+----------+----------+---++
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Number of threads

atomic_add-bench: 1000000 ops/thread, [0,128] range

70 ++---------+----------+---------+----------+----------+----------+---++
+cmpxchg +-E--+ + + + + + |
60 ++master +-H--+ +++ ---+E+-----+E+------+E+
| +E+------E-------+E+--- |
| --- +++ |
50 ++ +++--- ++
| -+E+ |
40 ++ +++---- ++
| E- |
| --| |
30 ++ -- +++ ++
| +E+ |
20 ++E+ ++
|E+ |
| |
10 ++ ++
+ + + + + + + |
0 +HH-H----H-+-----H----+---------+----------+----------+----------+---++
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Number of threads

atomic_add-bench: 1000000 ops/thread, [0,1024] range

160 ++---------+---------+----------+---------+----------+----------+---++
+cmpxchg +-E--+ + + + + + |
140 ++master +-H--+ +++ +++
| -+E+-----+E+-------E|
120 ++ +++ ---- +++
| +++ ----E-- |
100 ++ --E--- +++ ++
| +++ ---- +++ |
80 ++ --E-- ++
| ---- +++ |
| -+E+ |
60 ++ ---- +++ ++
| +E+- |
40 ++ -- ++
| +E+ |
20 +EE+ ++
+++ + + + + + + |
0 +HH-H---H--+-----H---+----------+---------+----------+----------+---++
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Number of threads

Backports commit 1dd089d0eec060dcd8478735114d98421d414805 from qemu
2018-02-28 00:21:27 -05:00
bindings
docs
include tcg: Add EXCP_ATOMIC 2018-02-27 11:57:58 -05:00
msvc qapi: rename *qmp-*-visitor* to *qobject-*-visitor* 2018-02-26 15:42:37 -05:00
qemu target-arm: emulate aarch64's LL/SC using cmpxchg helpers 2018-02-28 00:21:27 -05:00
samples
tests
.appveyor.yml
.gitignore
.travis.yml
AUTHORS.TXT
Brewfile
ChangeLog
config.mk
COPYING
COPYING_GLIB
COPYING.LGPL2
CREDITS.TXT
install-cmocka-linux.sh
list.c
make.sh
Makefile
msvc.bat
pkgconfig.mk
README.md
uc.c exec: avoid realloc in phys_map_node_reserve 2018-02-25 19:32:40 -05:00
windows_export.bat

Unicorn Engine

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Build Status Build status

Unicorn is a lightweight, multi-platform, multi-architecture CPU emulator framework based on QEMU.

Unicorn offers some unparalleled features:

  • Multi-architecture: ARM, ARM64 (ARMv8), M68K, MIPS, SPARC, and X86 (16, 32, 64-bit)
  • Clean/simple/lightweight/intuitive architecture-neutral API
  • Implemented in pure C language, with bindings for Crystal, Clojure, Visual Basic, Perl, Rust, Ruby, Python, Java, .NET, Go, Delphi/Free Pascal and Haskell.
  • Native support for Windows & *nix (with Mac OSX, Linux, *BSD & Solaris confirmed)
  • High performance via Just-In-Time compilation
  • Support for fine-grained instrumentation at various levels
  • Thread-safety by design
  • Distributed under free software license GPLv2

Further information is available at http://www.unicorn-engine.org

License

This project is released under the GPL license.

Compilation & Docs

See docs/COMPILE.md file for how to compile and install Unicorn.

More documentation is available in docs/README.md.

Contact

Contact us via mailing list, email or twitter for any questions.

Contribute

If you want to contribute, please pick up something from our Github issues.

We also maintain a list of more challenged problems in a TODO list.

CREDITS.TXT records important contributors of our project.