[Haskell-cafe] ANN: powerpc-0.0.1

[Tom Hawkins]

Here is a new library for analyzing PowerPC programs [1].  At this
point it does instruction set simulation on machine code -- and not
all instructions are implemented yet, BTW.

To run a simulation, the user defines an instance of the Memory class
[2] to represent both instruction and data memory.  The Memory class
declares functions for memory loads and stores, instruction fetches,
and reading and writing special purpose registers.  In our test bench,
we set up the 'fetch' method to dump out register values so we can see
the state of the processor at every step.

A neat feature of the library is the instruction behavior is captured
by a little DSL [3].  This makes it easy to add new instructions
because the translation from the instruction RTL spec [4] to the DSL
is nearly one-to-one.  And with instruction behavior captured
symbolically, this opens the door to other types of analysis besides
just simulation.

I hope a few folks find it useful.

-Tom


[1] http://hackage.haskell.org/package/powerpc
[2] http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/powerpc/0.0.1/doc/html/Language-PowerPC-Simulator.html#t%3AMemory
[3] http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/powerpc/0.0.1/doc/html/Language-PowerPC-RTL.html
[4] http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/systems/library/es-archguide-v2.html