article

ATOM: a system for building customized program analysis tools

Authors:

Amitabh Srivastava and

Alan EustaceAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 39, Issue 4

Pages 528 - 539

https://doi.org/10.1145/989393.989446

Published: 01 April 2004 Publication History

Abstract

ATOM (Analysis Tools with OM) is a single framework for building a wide range of customized program analysis tools. It provides the common infrastructure present in all code-instrumenting tools; this is the difficult and time-consuming part. The user simply defines the tool-specific details in instrumentation and analysis routines. Building a basic block counting tool like Pixie with ATOM requires only a page of code.ATOM, using OM link-time technology, organizes the final executable such that the application program and user's analysis routines run in the same address space. Information is directly passed from the application program to the analysis routines through simple procedure calls instead of inter-process communication or files on disk. ATOM takes care that analysis routines do not interfere with the program's execution, and precise information about the program is presented to the analysis routines at all times. ATOM uses no simulation or interpretation.ATOM has been implemented on the Alpha AXP under OSF/1. It is efficient and has been used to build a diverse set of tools for basic block counting, profiling, dynamic memory recording, instruction and data cache simulation, pipeline simulation, evaluating branch prediction, and instruction scheduling.

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGPLAN Notices

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 39, Issue 4

20 Years of the ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation 1979-1999: A Selection

April 2004

673 pages

ISSN:0362-1340

EISSN:1558-1160

DOI:10.1145/989393

Editor:
Kathryn S. McKinley
The University of Texas at Austin, USA

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2004 Authors.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 01 April 2004

Published in SIGPLAN Volume 39, Issue 4

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Majlesi-Kupaei AKim DBarua R(2021)RL-BIN++: Overcoming Binary Instrumentation Challenges in the Presence of Obfuscation Techniques and Problematic FeaturesProceedings of the 2021 10th International Conference on Software and Computer Applications10.1145/3457784.3457825(262-272)Online publication date: 23-Feb-2021
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