[llvm-dev] [GlobalISel][RFC] Thoughts on MachineModulePass

[John Criswell via llvm-dev]

On 1/22/16 6:16 PM, Quentin Colombet via llvm-dev wrote:
> Hi,
>
> In the initial thread of the proposal for GlobalISel, I have mentioned that it may be interesting to have a kind of MachineModulePass.
> Marcello mentioned this would be useful for their current pipeline.
>
> I am interested in knowing:
> 1. If anyone else is interested for such concept?
> 2. What kind of information should we make accessible in an hypothetical MachineModule? I.e., how do you plan to use the MachineModulePass so that we make the right design decisions for the MachineModule feeding those passes?
> 3. Who would be willing to work on that?

Nearly perfect timing.  I just wrote a grant proposal requesting funding 
to do just such a thing.
:)

My research group is interested in a MachineModulePass because we are 
using LLVM's MachineInstr infrastructure for analyzing machine code.  
Specifically, we are attempting to build an infrastructure for measuring 
how well various defenses work against code reuse attacks.  We are 
analyzing both data flow and control flow, and it would be handy for us 
to be able to analyze an entire program's assembly code (because we're 
looking for every last reusable instruction that an attacker could use 
and how those instructions can be strung together).  We want to analyze 
after everything has been done (register allocation, instruction 
selection and scheduling, etc.).

At the very least, we'll be doing analysis, though it is conceivable 
that we would want to do transformation in the future (e.g., if we can 
determine that breaking certain data flows would stop an attack, we 
could transform the code to change the data flow).

Ethan, can you add anything more specific on what would be on our wish list?

As for resources, we're currently early enough in the project that we're 
not needing the inter-procedural analysis, and if we do need it, it may 
be quicker for us to hack something together than to enhance LLVM 
properly.  The point of the proposal is to seek additional funding so 
that we could afford to do things properly instead of just hacking 
something together just to meet our own research needs.  That said, if 
we makes sense to join forces, we'd certainly be open to doing that.

Regards,

John Criswell

>
> Thanks,
> -Quentin
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-- 
John Criswell
Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science, University of Rochester
http://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/criswell