ANA : a method for ARM-on-ARM execution

Abstract

This thesis proposes and implements ANA, a new method for the simulation of ARM programs on the ARM platform. ANA is a lightweight ARM instruction interpreter that uses the hardware to do a lot of the work for the read-decode-execute piece of simulation. We compare this method to the two existing methods of full simulation and direct execution that have been traditionally used to achieve this. We demonstrate that despite some setbacks caused by the prefetching and caching behaviors of the ARM, ANA continues to be a very useful tool for prototyping and for increasing simulator performance. Finally, we identify the important role that ANA can play in our current efforts to virtualize the ARM.