PinOS: a programmable framework for whole-system dynamic instrumentation

  • Authors:
  • Prashanth P. Bungale;Chi-Keung Luk

  • Affiliations:
  • Harvard University, Cambridge, MA;Intel Corporation, Hudson, MA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on Virtual execution environments
  • Year:
  • 2007

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

PinOS is an extension of the Pin dynamic instrumentation framework for whole-system instrumentation, i.e., to instrument both kernel and user-level code. It achieves this by interposing between the subject system and hardware using virtualization techniques. Specifically, PinOS is built on top of the Xen virtual machine monitor with Intel VT technology to allow instrumentation of unmodified OSes. PinOS is based on software dynamic translation and hence can perform pervasive fine-grain instrumentation. By inheriting the powerful instrumentation API from Pin, plus introducing some new API for system-level instrumentation, PinOS can be used to write system-wide instrumentation tools for tasks like program analysis and architectural studies. As of today, PinOS can boot Linux on IA-32 in uniprocessor mode, and can instrument complex applications such as database and web servers.