Paper Info
Title
WatchdogLite: Hardware-Accelerated Compiler-Based Pointer Checking
Abstract
Lack of memory safety in C is the root cause of a multitude of serious bugs and security vulnerabilities. Numerous software-only and hardware-based schemes have been proposed to enforce memory safety. Among these approaches, pointer-based checking, which maintains per-pointer metadata in a disjoint metadata space, has been recognized as providing comprehensive memory safety. Software approaches for pointer-based checking have high performance overheads. In contrast, hardware approaches introduce a myriad of hardware structures and widgets to mitigate those performance overheads. This paper proposes WatchdogLite, an ISA extension that provides hardware acceleration for a compiler implementation of pointer-based checking. This division of labor between the compiler and the hardware allows for hardware acceleration while using only preexisting architectural registers. By leveraging the compiler to identify pointers, perform check elimination, and insert the new instructions, this approach attains performance similar to prior hardware-intensive approaches without adding any hardware structures for tracking metadata.
Year
DOI
Venue
2014
10.1145/2544137.2544147
CGO
Keywords
Field
DocType
hardware structure,hardware acceleration,approach attains performance,hardware approach,high performance overhead,memory safety,pointer-based checking,compiler implementation,hardware-accelerated compiler-based pointer checking,comprehensive memory safety,disjoint metadata space,bounds checking
Pointer (computer programming),Memory safety,Escape analysis,Computer science,Real-time computing,Smart pointer,Computer hardware,Bounds checking,Metadata,Parallel computing,Compiler,Hardware acceleration,Operating system
Conference
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
978-1-4503-2670-4
26
0.80
References 
Authors
34
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Santosh Nagarakatte156923.95
Milo M. K. Martin22677125.22
Steve Zdancewic3170281.35