<html><head><meta name="color-scheme" content="light dark"></head><body><pre style="word-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;">\section{Staticdeps}

The static analyzer we present, \staticdeps{}, only aims to tackle the
difficulty~\ref{memcarried_difficulty_arith} mentioned above: tracking
dependencies across arbitrarily complex pointer arithmetic.

To do so, \staticdeps{} works at the basic-block level, unrolled enough times
to fill the reorder buffer as detailed above; this way, arbitrarily
long-reaching relevant loop-carried dependencies can be detected.

This problem could be solved using symbolic calculus algorithms. However, those
algorithms are not straightforward to implement, and the equality test between
two arbitrary expressions can be costly.

\subsection{The \staticdeps{} heuristic}

Instead, we use an heuristic based on random values. We consider the set $\calR
= \left\{0, 1, \ldots, 2^{64}-1\right\}$ of values representable by a 64-bits
unsigned integer; we extend this set to $\bar\calR = \calR \cup \{\bot\}$,
where $\bot$ denotes an invalid value. We then proceed as previously for
register-carried dependencies, applying the following principles.

\smallskip{}
\begin{itemize}
    \item{} Whenever an unknown value is read, either from a register or from
        memory, generate a fresh value from $\calR$, uniformly sampled at
        random. This value is saved to a shadow register file or memory, and
        will be used again the next time this same data is accessed.

    \item{} Whenever an integer arithmetic operation is encountered, compute
        the result of the operation and save the result to the shadow register
        file or memory.

    \item{} Whenever another kind of operation, or an operation that is
        unsupported, is encountered, save the destination operand as $\bot$;
        this operation is assumed to not be valid pointer arithmetic.
        Operations on $\bot$ always yield $\bot$ as a result.

    \item{} Whenever writing to a memory location, compute the written address
        using the above principles, and proceed as with a dynamic analysis,
        keeping track of the instruction that last wrote to a memory address.

    \item{} Whenever reading from a memory location, compute the read address
        using the above principles, and generate a dependency from the current
        instruction to the instruction that last wrote to this address (if
        known).
\end{itemize}

\subsection{Practical implementation}

We implement \staticdeps{} in Python, using \texttt{pyelftools} and the
\texttt{capstone} disassembler ---~which we already introduced in
\autoref{sec:benchsuite_bb}~--- to extract and disassemble the targeted basic
block. The semantics needed to compute encountered operations are obtained by
lifting the kernel's assembly to \valgrind{}'s \vex{} intermediary
representation.

\medskip{}

The implementation of the heuristic detailed above provides us with a raw list
of dependencies across iterations of the considered basic block. We then
``re-roll'' the unrolled kernel by transcribing each dependency to a triplet
$(\texttt{source\_insn}, \texttt{dest\_insn}, \Delta{}k)$, where the first two
elements are the source and destination instruction of the dependency \emph{in
the original, non-unrolled kernel}, and $\Delta{}k$ is the number of iterations
of the kernel between the source and destination instruction of the dependency.

Finally, we filter out spurious dependencies: each dependency found should
occur for each kernel iteration $i$ at which $i + \Delta{}k$ is within bounds.
If the dependency is found for less than $80\,\%$ of those iterations, the
dependency is declared spurious and is dropped.

\subsection{Limitations}\label{ssec:staticdeps_limits}

In \autoref{chap:CesASMe}, we argued that one of the shortcomings that most
crippled state-of-the-art tools was that analyses were conducted
out-of-context, considering only the basic block at hand. This analysis is also
true for \staticdeps{}, as it is still focused on a single basic block in
isolation; in particular, any aliasing that stems from outside of the analyzed
basic block is not visible to \staticdeps{}.

Work towards a broader analysis range, \eg{} at the scale of a function, or at
least initializing values with gathered assertions ---~maybe based on abstract
interpretation techniques~--- could be beneficial to the quality of
dependencies detections.

\medskip{}

As \staticdeps{}'s heuristic is based on randomness in a Monte Carlo sense, it
may yield false positives: two registers could theoretically be assigned the
same value sampled at random, making them aliasing addresses. This is, however,
very improbable, as values are sampled from a set of cardinality $2^{64}$. If
necessary, the error can be reduced by amplification: running multiple times
the algorithm on different randomness seeds reduces the error exponentially.

Conversely, \staticdeps{} should not present false negatives due to randomness.
Dependencies may go undetected, \eg{} because of out-of-scope aliasing or
unsupported operations. However, no dependency that falls into the scope of
\depsim{}'s analysis should be missed because of random initialisations.
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