Article

Reducing program image size by extracting frozen code and data

Authors:

Gadi Haber, and

Roy LevinAuthors Info & Claims

EMSOFT '04: Proceedings of the 4th ACM international conference on Embedded software

September 2004

Pages 297 - 305

https://doi.org/10.1145/1017753.1017800

Published: 27 September 2004 Publication History

Abstract

Constraints on the memory size of embedded systems require reducing the image size of executing programs. Common techniques include code compression and reduced instruction sets. We propose a novel technique that eliminates large portions of the executable image without compromising execution time (due to decompression) or code generation (due to reduced instruction sets). Frozen code and data portions are identified using profiling techniques and removed from the loadable image. They are replaced with branches to code stubs that load them in the unlikely case that they are accessed. The executable is sustained in a runnable mode.Analysis of the frozen portions reveals that most are error and uncommon input handlers. Only a minority of the code (less than 1%) that was identified as frozen during a training run, is also accessed with production datasets.The technique was applied on three benchmark suites (SPEC CINT2000, SPEC CFP2000, and MediaBench) and results in image size reductions of up to 73%, 92%, and 85% per suite, The average reductions are 59%, 79%, and 78% per suite.

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Cited By

Tsafrir DWisniewski RBacon DStroustrup BArora SLeavens G(2009)Minimizing dependencies within generic classes for faster and smaller programsProceedings of the 24th ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object oriented programming systems languages and applications10.1145/1640089.1640121(425-444)Online publication date: 26-Oct-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1640089.1640121
Tsafrir DWisniewski RBacon DStroustrup B(2009)Minimizing dependencies within generic classes for faster and smaller programsACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/1639949.164012144:10(425-444)Online publication date: 25-Oct-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1639949.1640121
Chanet DCabezas JMorancho ENavarro NBosschere K(2009)Linux Kernel Compaction through Cold Code SwappingTransactions on High-Performance Embedded Architectures and Compilers II10.1007/978-3-642-00904-4_10(173-200)Online publication date: 22-Apr-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-642-00904-4_10
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Reducing program image size by extracting frozen code and data
1. Computer systems organization
  1. Embedded and cyber-physical systems
  2. Real-time systems

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cover image ACM Conferences

EMSOFT '04: Proceedings of the 4th ACM international conference on Embedded software

September 2004

316 pages

ISBN:1581138601

DOI:10.1145/1017753

General Chair:
Giorgio Buttazzo
University of Pavia, Italy

Copyright © 2004 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGBED: ACM Special Interest Group on Embedded Systems

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 27 September 2004

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EMSOFT04: Fourth ACM International Conference on Embedded Software 2004

September 27 - 29, 2004

Pisa, Italy

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Overall Acceptance Rate 60 of 203 submissions, 30%

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Cited By

Tsafrir DWisniewski RBacon DStroustrup BArora SLeavens G(2009)Minimizing dependencies within generic classes for faster and smaller programsProceedings of the 24th ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object oriented programming systems languages and applications10.1145/1640089.1640121(425-444)Online publication date: 26-Oct-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1640089.1640121
Tsafrir DWisniewski RBacon DStroustrup B(2009)Minimizing dependencies within generic classes for faster and smaller programsACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/1639949.164012144:10(425-444)Online publication date: 25-Oct-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1639949.1640121
Chanet DCabezas JMorancho ENavarro NBosschere K(2009)Linux Kernel Compaction through Cold Code SwappingTransactions on High-Performance Embedded Architectures and Compilers II10.1007/978-3-642-00904-4_10(173-200)Online publication date: 22-Apr-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-642-00904-4_10
Chanet DDe Sutter BDe Bus BVan Put LDe Bosschere K(2007)Automated reduction of the memory footprint of the Linux kernelACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems10.1145/1274858.12748616:4(23-es)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2007
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1274858.1274861

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