Architecture-Aware Real-Time Compression of Execution Traces
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In recent years, on-chip trace generation has been recognized as a solution to the debugging of increasingly complex software. An execution trace can be seen as the most fundamentally useful type of trace, allowing the execution path of software to be determined post hoc. However, the bandwidth required to output such a trace can be excessive. Our architecture-aware trace compression (AATC) scheme adds an on-chip branch predictor and branch target buffer to reduce the volume of execution trace data in real time through on-chip compression. Novel redundancy reduction strategies are employed, most notably in exploiting the widespread use of linked branches and the compiler-driven movement of return addresses between link register, stack, and program counter. In doing so, the volume of branch target addresses is reduced by 52%, whereas other algorithmic improvements further decrease trace volume. An analysis of spatial and temporal redundancy in the trace stream allows a comparison of encoding strategies to be made for systematically increasing compression performance. A combination of differential, Fibonacci, VarLen, and Move-to-Front encodings are chosen to produce two compressor variants: a performance-focused xAATC that encodes 56.5 instructions/bit using 24,133 gates and an area-efficient fAATC that encodes 48.1 instructions/bit using only 9,854 gates.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".