Runtime Overhead Reduction in Automated Parallel Processing System Using Valgrind

Recently, multicore processors are usual in various computer systems. Thread level parallel processing is required to efficiently utilize the performance of multicore processors. To realize the automatic parallel processing that does not require program source codes, we develop a system that can parallelize sequential program binary code to the parallelized one by using dynamic binary translation facility of Valgrind. Since the Valgrind searches for the translated code of each basic block whenever each basic block of target program binary code is executed, the translation process itself becomes the runtime overhead and might cause the obstacle of performance improvement. Toward this problem, we develop two methods for reducing the number of search processes of translated codes. One method is that a basic block directly jumps to itself without passing through the search process within the Valgrind system core when the next basic block is the same as the current block itself. The other method is that multiple basic blocks are translated at a time to allow each block to directly jump to next one. Preliminary evaluation shows that our two methods can reduce 36% of the execution cycles, with the optimization facility of Valgrind enabled.