An Analysis of x86-64 Inline Assembly in C Programs

Manuel Rigger; Stefan Marr; Stephen Kell; David Leopoldseder; Hanspeter Mössenböck

An Analysis of x86-64 Inline Assembly in C Programs

Manuel Rigger, Stefan Marr, Stephen Kell, David Leopoldseder, Hanspeter Mössenböck

Institute for Systems Software

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference proceedings › peer-review

Abstract

C codebases frequently embed nonportable and unstandard- ized elements such as inline assembly code. Such elements are not well understood, which poses a problem to tool develop- ers who aspire to support C code. This paper investigates the use of x86-64 inline assembly in 1264 C projects from GitHub and combines qualitative and quantitative analyses to answer questions that tool authors may have. We found that 28.1% of the most popular projects contain inline assembly code, although the majority contain only a few fragments with just one or two instructions. The most popular instructions constitute a small subset concerned largely with multicore semantics, performance optimization, and hardware control. Our findings are intended to help developers of C-focused tools, those testing compilers, and language designers seek- ing to reduce the reliance on inline assembly. They may also aid the design of tools focused on inline assembly itself

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Proceeding VEE '18 Proceedings of the 14th ACM SIGPLAN/SIGOPS International Conference on Virtual Execution Environments
Publisher	ACM New York, NY, USA
Number of pages	16
ISBN (Print)	978-1-4503-5579-7
Publication status	Published - Mar 2018

Fields of science

102 Computer Sciences
102009 Computer simulation
102011 Formal languages
102013 Human-computer interaction
102022 Software development
102024 Usability research
102029 Practical computer science

JKU Focus areas

Computation in Informatics and Mathematics
Engineering and Natural Sciences (in general)

Cite this

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title = "An Analysis of x86-64 Inline Assembly in C Programs",

abstract = "C codebases frequently embed nonportable and unstandard- ized elements such as inline assembly code. Such elements are not well understood, which poses a problem to tool develop- ers who aspire to support C code. This paper investigates the use of x86-64 inline assembly in 1264 C projects from GitHub and combines qualitative and quantitative analyses to answer questions that tool authors may have. We found that 28.1% of the most popular projects contain inline assembly code, although the majority contain only a few fragments with just one or two instructions. The most popular instructions constitute a small subset concerned largely with multicore semantics, performance optimization, and hardware control. Our findings are intended to help developers of C-focused tools, those testing compilers, and language designers seek- ing to reduce the reliance on inline assembly. They may also aid the design of tools focused on inline assembly itself",

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T1 - An Analysis of x86-64 Inline Assembly in C Programs

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AU - Marr, Stefan

AU - Kell, Stephen

AU - Leopoldseder, David

AU - Mössenböck, Hanspeter

PY - 2018/3

Y1 - 2018/3

N2 - C codebases frequently embed nonportable and unstandard- ized elements such as inline assembly code. Such elements are not well understood, which poses a problem to tool develop- ers who aspire to support C code. This paper investigates the use of x86-64 inline assembly in 1264 C projects from GitHub and combines qualitative and quantitative analyses to answer questions that tool authors may have. We found that 28.1% of the most popular projects contain inline assembly code, although the majority contain only a few fragments with just one or two instructions. The most popular instructions constitute a small subset concerned largely with multicore semantics, performance optimization, and hardware control. Our findings are intended to help developers of C-focused tools, those testing compilers, and language designers seek- ing to reduce the reliance on inline assembly. They may also aid the design of tools focused on inline assembly itself

AB - C codebases frequently embed nonportable and unstandard- ized elements such as inline assembly code. Such elements are not well understood, which poses a problem to tool develop- ers who aspire to support C code. This paper investigates the use of x86-64 inline assembly in 1264 C projects from GitHub and combines qualitative and quantitative analyses to answer questions that tool authors may have. We found that 28.1% of the most popular projects contain inline assembly code, although the majority contain only a few fragments with just one or two instructions. The most popular instructions constitute a small subset concerned largely with multicore semantics, performance optimization, and hardware control. Our findings are intended to help developers of C-focused tools, those testing compilers, and language designers seek- ing to reduce the reliance on inline assembly. They may also aid the design of tools focused on inline assembly itself

UR - https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3186411.3186418

M3 - Conference proceedings

SN - 978-1-4503-5579-7

BT - Proceeding VEE '18 Proceedings of the 14th ACM SIGPLAN/SIGOPS International Conference on Virtual Execution Environments

PB - ACM New York, NY, USA

ER -

An Analysis of x86-64 Inline Assembly in C Programs

Abstract

Fields of science

JKU Focus areas

Other files and links

Java VM Compiler Performance (Oracle)

Cite this

An Analysis of x86-64 Inline Assembly in C Programs

Abstract

Fields of science

JKU Focus areas

Other files and links

Projects

Java VM Compiler Performance (Oracle)

Cite this