1 <html> 2 <head> 3 <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"> 4 <title>1.The Design and Implementation of Valgrind</title> 5 <link rel="stylesheet" href="vg_basic.css" type="text/css"> 6 <meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.75.2"> 7 <link rel="home" href="index.html" title="Valgrind Documentation"> 8 <link rel="up" href="tech-docs.html" title="Valgrind Technical Documentation"> 9 <link rel="prev" href="tech-docs.html" title="Valgrind Technical Documentation"> 10 <link rel="next" href="manual-writing-tools.html" title="2.Writing a New Valgrind Tool"> 11 </head> 12 <body bgcolor="white" text="black" link="#0000FF" vlink="#840084" alink="#0000FF"> 13 <div><table class="nav" width="100%" cellspacing="3" cellpadding="3" border="0" summary="Navigation header"><tr> 14 <td width="22px" align="center" valign="middle"><a accesskey="p" href="tech-docs.html"><img src="images/prev.png" width="18" height="21" border="0" alt="Prev"></a></td> 15 <td width="25px" align="center" valign="middle"><a accesskey="u" href="tech-docs.html"><img src="images/up.png" width="21" height="18" border="0" alt="Up"></a></td> 16 <td width="31px" align="center" valign="middle"><a accesskey="h" href="index.html"><img src="images/home.png" width="27" height="20" border="0" alt="Up"></a></td> 17 <th align="center" valign="middle">Valgrind Technical Documentation</th> 18 <td width="22px" align="center" valign="middle"><a accesskey="n" href="manual-writing-tools.html"><img src="images/next.png" width="18" height="21" border="0" alt="Next"></a></td> 19 </tr></table></div> 20 <div class="chapter" title="1.The Design and Implementation of Valgrind"> 21 <div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title"> 22 <a name="design-impl"></a>1.The Design and Implementation of Valgrind</h2></div></div></div> 23 <p>A number of academic publications nicely describe many aspects 24 of Valgrind's design and implementation. Online copies of all of 25 them, and others, are available on the <a class="ulink" href="http://www.valgrind.org/docs/pubs.html" target="_top">Valgrind 26 publications page</a>.</p> 27 <p>The following paper gives a good overview of Valgrind, and explains 28 how it differs from other dynamic binary instrumentation frameworks such as 29 Pin and DynamoRIO.</p> 30 <div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" type="disc"><li class="listitem"><p> 31 <span class="command"><strong>Valgrind: A Framework for Heavyweight Dynamic Binary 32 Instrumentation. Nicholas Nethercote and Julian Seward. Proceedings 33 of ACM SIGPLAN 2007 Conference on Programming Language Design and 34 Implementation (PLDI 2007), San Diego, California, USA, June 35 2007.</strong></span> 36 </p></li></ul></div> 37 <p>The following two papers together give a comprehensive description of 38 how most of Memcheck works. The first paper describes in detail how 39 Memcheck's undefined value error detection (a.k.a. V bits) works. The 40 second paper describes in detail how Memcheck's shadow memory is 41 implemented, and compares it to other alternative approaches. 42 </p> 43 <div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" type="disc"><li class="listitem"> 44 <p><span class="command"><strong>Using Valgrind to detect undefined value errors with 45 bit-precision. Julian Seward and Nicholas Nethercote. Proceedings 46 of the USENIX'05 Annual Technical Conference, Anaheim, California, 47 USA, April 2005.</strong></span> 48 </p> 49 <p><span class="command"><strong>How to Shadow Every Byte of Memory Used by a Program. 50 Nicholas Nethercote and Julian Seward. Proceedings of the Third 51 International ACM SIGPLAN/SIGOPS Conference on Virtual Execution 52 Environments (VEE 2007), San Diego, California, USA, June 53 2007.</strong></span> 54 </p> 55 </li></ul></div> 56 <p>The following paper describes Callgrind.</p> 57 <div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" type="disc"><li class="listitem"><p><span class="command"><strong>A Tool Suite for Simulation Based Analysis of Memory Access 58 Behavior. Josef Weidendorfer, Markus Kowarschik and Carsten 59 Trinitis. Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on 60 Computational Science (ICCS 2004), Krakow, Poland, June 2004.</strong></span> 61 </p></li></ul></div> 62 <p>The following dissertation describes Valgrind in some detail 63 (many of these details are now out-of-date) as well as Cachegrind, 64 Annelid and Redux. It also covers some underlying theory about 65 dynamic binary analysis in general and what all these tools have in 66 common.</p> 67 <div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" type="disc"><li class="listitem"><p><span class="command"><strong>Dynamic Binary Analysis and Instrumentation. Nicholas 68 Nethercote.</strong></span> PhD Dissertation, University of Cambridge, November 69 2004.</p></li></ul></div> 70 </div> 71 <div> 72 <br><table class="nav" width="100%" cellspacing="3" cellpadding="2" border="0" summary="Navigation footer"> 73 <tr> 74 <td rowspan="2" width="40%" align="left"> 75 <a accesskey="p" href="tech-docs.html"><<Valgrind Technical Documentation</a></td> 76 <td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="tech-docs.html">Up</a></td> 77 <td rowspan="2" width="40%" align="right"><a accesskey="n" href="manual-writing-tools.html">2.Writing a New Valgrind Tool>></a> 78 </td> 79 </tr> 80 <tr><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="index.html">Home</a></td></tr> 81 </table> 82 </div> 83 </body> 84 </html> 85
