Function-level profiling for embedded software with QEMU

摘要

Function-level profiling is crucial for optimised embedded software which has severe constraints on hardware resources, low power consumption, real-time responses, and so on. In this work, we provide a fast and reliable solution by utilising an instruction set simulator named QEMU and creating an analyser tool. We developed a tracing module inside the simulator to trace execution information of software at run-time and record it in a log file. Our implementation takes advantage of the dynamic binary translation of QEMU to keep its speed fast and use an analyser tool to analyse the log file and create a function-level profile. We implemented our solution methodology for the ARM architecture, and evaluated it with various kinds of embedded applications.