Deterministic Binary Translation

• Experts achieve performance on par with or better than QEMU’s user-mode JIT emulation
• Translation technology has limitations, including handling self-modifying code and adversarial binaries
• Static translation is only possible when assuming no adversarial code and mostly compiler-produced binaries

Introduction

Deterministic fully-static whole-binary translation without heuristics is a complex topic. Experts have made significant progress in this field.

The Buzz Score

The Internet’s Verdict: 70% Hyped, 30% Skeptical

Experts have mixed opinions on the technology. Some are impressed with its performance, while others are skeptical about its limitations.

Expert Opinions

One expert notes that

> Elevator achieves performance on par with or better than QEMU’s user-mode JIT emulation.

Another expert comments that

relative offsets could still be an issue, but it seems there must be some translation layer/mm since the codegen will be different sizes anyway.

A third expert warns that

static translation is only possible when you assume no adversarial code AND mostly assume compiler-produced binaries.

Conclusion

Deterministic fully-static whole-binary translation without heuristics is a promising technology with significant performance gains. However, it also has limitations that need to be addressed.

Focus Keyword: Binary Translation