Exception Handling in Application Level Binary Translation

Binary translation is applied for not only the legacy code porting but also software being used in different hardware platform. Exception handling is a most important aspect of binary translation research. How to balance the exception handling and the efficiency of binary translation is the key problem. Two methods to solve the active and passive exception handling in the library function jacket level are presented. One algorithm comes up to deal with efficienly the passive exception such as signal exception efficiently：if the exception handler doesn't use the machine state after exception happens, the translator doesn't preserve the precise machine state in every block. Thus, the cost for exception handling is low. For the Spec 2000 CPU ref input set, the cost, when the algorithm is applied to the translator, is an average 15.42 percent lower than the cost when the algorithm is not applied to the system. Another algorithm using emulated stack unwinding is submitted to find the calling address to help dealing with the active exception such as try catch exception in C++. The experiments prove the validity of the two ways of handling the exception. Adding the exception mechanics to the system doesn't decrease the performance of the common programs. These algorithms solve the exception handler in the application level program in binary translation quickly and correctly.