Efficient memory access checking

A new approach provides efficient concurrent checking of memory accesses using a signature embedded into each instance of a data structure, and using a new LOAD/STORE instruction that reads the data structure signature as a side effect. Software memory-access faults are detectable using this approach, including corrupted pointers, uninitialized pointers, stale pointers, and copy overruns. Hardware memory-access faults are also detectable, including faults in the memory access path and the register file. Instruction scheduling minimizes the cost of the side-effect reads, and signatures are checked with little overhead using the hardware monitor previously proposed for signature monitoring. Benchmark results for the MIPS R3000 executing code scheduled by a modified GNU C Compiler show that an average of 53% of the memory accesses are checked, and that access checking causes an average of less than 5% performance overhead.