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The New Jersey Machine-Code Toolkit

Report ID:
TR-469-94
Date:
September 1994
Pages:
14
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Abstract:

The New Jersey Machine-Code Toolkit helps programmers write
applications that process machine code. Applications that use the
toolkit are written at an assembly-language level of abstraction, but
they recognize and emit binary. Guided by a short instruction-set
specification, the toolkit generates all the bit-manipulating code.
The toolkit's specification language uses four concepts: fields and
tokens describe parts of instructions, patterns describe binary
encodings of instructions or groups of instructions, and constructors
map between the assembly-language and binary levels. These concepts
are suitable for describing both CISC and RISC machines; we have
written specifications for the MIPS R3000, SPARC, and Intel 486
instruction sets. Complete specifications for the three architectures
appear in [ramsey:tk-architecture]. Excerpts from those
specifications appear in this paper. The reference manual for the
toolkit [ramsey:tk-reference] gives a complete description of the
specification language.
We have written two applications that use the toolkit: a retargetable
debugger and a retargetable, optimizing linker. The toolkit generates
efficient code; for example, the linker emits binary up to 10% faster
than it emits assembly language, making it 1.5--2 times faster to
produce an a.out directly than by using the assembler.

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