Gleipnir

Abstract

In this article we describe a memory tracing and profiling tool called Gleipnir. Gleipnir is a plug-in tool for a widely used binary instrumentation framework, Valgrind. Gleipnir's ability to collect fine grained memory traces and associate each access to source level data structures and elements of these structures, makes it a good candidate tool for advanced memory analysis and studying complex memory access patterns. The data provided by Gleipnir may be used by cache simulators to analyze accesses to data structure elements and understand the dynamic memory behavior of programs. The goal of Gleipnir is to give the programmer aid in refactoring data and code. In addition to Gleipnir we introduce a cache simulation tool, Gl cSim. Gl cSim is an extension to DineroIV (a uni-processor simulator) that tracks Gleipnir provided trace and debug-information.