FADATest: Fast and Adaptive Performance Regression Testing of Dynamic Binary Translation Systems

Abstract

Dynamic binary translation (DBT) is the cornerstone of many im-portant applications. In practice, however, it is quite difficult to maintain the performance efficiency of a DBT system due to its inherent complexity. Although performance regression testing is an effective approach to detect potential performance regression issues, it is not easy to apply performance regression testing to DBT sys-tems, because of the natural differences between DBT systems and common software systems and the limited availability of effective test programs. In this paper, we present FADATest, which devises several novel techniques to address these challenges. Specifically, FADATest automatically generates adaptable test programs from existing real benchmark programs of DBT systems according to the runtime characteristics of the benchmarks. The test programs can then be used to achieve highly efficient and adaptive performance regression testing of DBT systems. We have implemented a proto-type of FADATest. Experimental results show that FADATest can successfully uncover the same performance regression issues across the evaluated versions of two popular DBT systems, QEMU and Valgrind, as the original benchmark programs. Moreover, the testing efficiency is improved significantly on two different hardware platforms powered by x86-64 and AArch64, respectively.