Blog: New Tool Makes Programs More Efficient Without Sacrificing Safety Functions

New Tool Makes Programs More Efficient Without Sacrificing Safety Functions
NCSU News (03/31/11) Matt Shipman

North Carolina State University (NCSU) researchers have developed software that helps programs run more efficiently on multicore chips without sacrificing safety features. The tool will help programmers who might otherwise leave out safety features because of how much they slow down a program's functions, says NCSU professor James Tuck. "Leaving out those features can mean that you don't identify a problem as soon as you could or should, which can be important--particularly if it's a problem that puts your system at risk from attack," Tuck says. In the past, the safety features were embedded directly into a program's code and run through the same core, which slows the program down. The researchers' tool utilizes multicore chips by running the safety features on a separate core in the same chip, which enables the main program to run at close-to-normal operating speed. "Utilizing our software tool, we were able to incorporate safety metafunctions, while only slowing the program down by approximately 25 percent," Tuck says.

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