[LLVMdev] GSoC09 - Port Valgrind to use LLVM

[Owen Anderson]

Rodrigo,

On Mar 20, 2009, at 8:41 AM, Rodrigo Dominguez wrote:
> Congratulations to LLVM for getting accepted to GSoC 2009!
>
> I am a PhD candidate interested in participating this year. I have  
> been
> working on dynamic compilation (binary translation or BT) for  
> multicore
> architectures for a couple of years. I am familiar with the  
> internals of
> several BT frameworks (including open-source Valgrind).
>
> I was looking at the ideas page for LLVM. I would like to know more  
> about
> "Miscellaneous Additions: Port Valgrind to use LLVM code generation  
> and
> optimization". Would it be possible to get in touch with the mentor  
> for this
> idea to learn more about it?

I think I'm the one who put that suggestion up, so I suppose I should  
speak to it. :-)

The concept would be to implement a conversion from Valgrind's  
internal IR to LLVM IR, and then employing the LLVM JIT system to  
execute the instrumented program.  In theory, at least, this shouldn't  
be too tough, as Valgrind already uses an SSA-based IR.  While there's  
almost certainly more overhead involved in doing this, it may be  
worthwhile if the instrumented program is long-running.

I'm not an expert on Valgrind, but I've been working on LLVM for while  
now, and could mentor at least the LLVM part of this.

--Owen