Unicorn CPU emulator framework (ARM, AArch64, M68K, Mips, Sparc, X86)
Go to file
Emilio G. Cota ec14a00925
target-arm: emulate 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 ARM 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/aNQpB

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

9 ++---------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+---++
+cmpxchg +-E--+ + + + + + |
8 +Emaster +-H--+ ++
| | |
7 ++E ++
| | |
6 ++++ ++
| | |
5 ++ | ++
4 ++ | ++
| | |
3 ++ | ++
| | |
2 ++ | ++
|H++E+--- +++ ---+E+------+E+------+E|
1 +++ +E+-----+E+------+E+------+E+------+E+-- +++ +++ ++
++H+ + +++ + +++ ++++ + + + |
0 ++--H----H-+-----H----+----------+----------+----------+----------+---++
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Number of threads

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

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

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

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

Backports commit 354161b37c6465a32073eac5f16fa35939af2bb4 from qemu
2018-02-28 00:07:44 -05:00
bindings link to Crystal binding 2017-12-23 00:26:40 +08:00
docs Added note about installing tests dependencies on Mac OS X. Added note about tests failing when required architecture support is disabled in build. (#908) 2017-10-12 19:56:00 +08:00
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 LL/SC using cmpxchg helpers 2018-02-28 00:07:44 -05:00
samples Fixed register mistake in comments (#894) 2017-09-17 16:40:01 +07:00
tests add 64-bit test demonstrating setting MSRs and FS/GS segments (#901) 2017-09-29 04:26:23 +08:00
.appveyor.yml MSYS test (#852) 2017-06-25 10:11:35 +08:00
.gitignore arm64eb: add support for ARM64 big endian. 2017-04-24 23:30:01 +08:00
.travis.yml use new travis osx image and brew (#935) 2018-01-05 10:29:49 +08:00
AUTHORS.TXT import 2015-08-21 15:04:50 +08:00
Brewfile Update Brewfile 2017-09-30 17:36:44 +07:00
ChangeLog update ChangeLog 2017-04-20 13:28:02 +08:00
config.mk Fix document file extension 2016-08-08 17:33:49 +09:00
COPYING import 2015-08-21 15:04:50 +08:00
COPYING.LGPL2 LGPL2 for all header files under include/unicorn/ 2017-12-16 10:08:42 +08:00
COPYING_GLIB glib_compat: add COPYING_GLIB 2016-12-27 10:15:08 +08:00
CREDITS.TXT update CREDITS.TXT 2017-04-25 12:56:47 +08:00
install-cmocka-linux.sh Start moving examples in S files (#851) 2017-06-25 10:14:22 +08:00
list.c callback to count number of instructions in uc_emu_start() should be executed first. fix #727 2017-06-16 13:22:38 +08:00
make.sh Added MSVC support for arm64eb. 2017-04-25 14:23:58 +10:00
Makefile crypto: introduce new module for computing hash digests 2018-02-17 15:23:17 -05:00
msvc.bat add msvc.bat 2017-04-21 15:35:40 +08:00
pkgconfig.mk bump extra version to 2 2017-04-21 15:30:40 +08:00
README.md add Clojure 2017-12-23 00:32:33 +08:00
uc.c exec: avoid realloc in phys_map_node_reserve 2018-02-25 19:32:40 -05:00
windows_export.bat Make the call out to visual studio extremely resilient 2017-01-02 03:32:48 -08:00

Unicorn Engine

Join the chat at https://gitter.im/unicorn-engine/chat

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.