llvm dev - Mar 2008 - [LLVMdev] Any idea on translate x86 assembly to LLVM IR?

I'am now considering converting x86 machine assembly into LLVM IR, does
anyone know about any existing project or resource related to this area?
Any difficulities or any ideas on this?

thanks for your replies in advance.




cradnil
2008-03-04
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> I'am now considering converting x86 machine assembly into LLVM
> IR, does anyone know about any existing project or resource
> related to this area? Any difficulities or any ideas on this?
There is a idea floating around that LLVM and QEMU could be 
married. QEMU has sort-of-a-disassembler, where they generate 
little pieces of code and later let that code execute (it's 
actually a bit different, but hey, use the source). The idea was 
to replace that part with an LLVM IR generation. Then you can 
use standard LLVM optimization passes on this and/or run this 
code via JIT.

Anyway, the disassembler-part of QEMU is easy to rip out, for me 
it was easier than, say, the libbfd based disassemblers, which 
are highly optimized to produce human readable strings.

This is a hard problem. Machine assembly is (mostly) untyped. You also  
have to reconstruct CFG, translate it back to SSA form. Not to mention  
how do you translate instructions where there is no equivalent llvm  
instruction.

Evan

On Mar 3, 2008, at 9:48 PM, cradnil wrote:
> I'am now considering converting x86 machine assembly into LLVM IR,  
> does anyone know about any existing project or resource related to  
> this area?
> Any difficulities or any ideas on this?
>
> thanks for your replies in advance.
>
> cradnil
> 2008-03-04
> _______________________________________________
> LLVM Developers mailing list
> LLVMdev at cs.uiuc.edu         http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu
> http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev
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