Files
wasmtime/cranelift
Afonso Bordado 2776074dfc cranelift: Add stack support to the interpreter with virtual addresses (#3187)
* cranelift: Add stack support to the interpreter

We also change the approach for heap loads and stores.

Previously we would use the offset as the address to the heap. However,
this approach does not allow using the load/store instructions to
read/write from both the heap and the stack.

This commit changes the addressing mechanism of the interpreter. We now
return the real addresses from the addressing instructions
(stack_addr/heap_addr), and instead check if the address passed into
the load/store instructions points to an area in the heap or the stack.

* cranelift: Add virtual addresses to cranelift interpreter

Adds a  Virtual Addressing scheme that was discussed as a better
alternative to returning the real addresses.

The virtual addresses are split into 4 regions (stack, heap, tables and
global values), and the address itself is composed of an `entry` field
and an `offset` field. In general the `entry` field corresponds to the
instance of the resource (e.g. table5 is entry 5) and the `offset` field
is a byte offset inside that entry.

There is one exception to this which is the stack, where due to only
having one stack, the whole address is an offset field.

The number of bits in entry vs offset fields is variable with respect to
the `region` and the address size (32bits vs 64bits). This is done
because with 32 bit addresses we would have to compromise on heap size,
or have a small number of global values / tables. With 64 bit addresses
we do not have to compromise on this, but we need to support 32 bit
addresses.

* cranelift: Remove interpreter trap codes

* cranelift: Calculate frame_offset when entering or exiting a frame

* cranelift: Add safe read/write interface to DataValue

* cranelift: DataValue write full 128bit slot for booleans

* cranelift: Use DataValue accessors for trampoline.
2021-08-24 09:29:11 -07:00
..
2020-09-25 11:12:21 +02:00
2021-01-25 15:29:51 -08:00

Cranelift Code Generator

A Bytecode Alliance project

Cranelift is a low-level retargetable code generator. It translates a target-independent intermediate representation into executable machine code.

Build Status Fuzzit Status Chat Minimum rustc 1.37 Documentation Status

For more information, see the documentation.

For an example of how to use the JIT, see the JIT Demo, which implements a toy language.

For an example of how to use Cranelift to run WebAssembly code, see Wasmtime, which implements a standalone, embeddable, VM using Cranelift.

Status

Cranelift currently supports enough functionality to run a wide variety of programs, including all the functionality needed to execute WebAssembly MVP functions, although it needs to be used within an external WebAssembly embedding to be part of a complete WebAssembly implementation.

The x86-64 backend is currently the most complete and stable; other architectures are in various stages of development. Cranelift currently supports both the System V AMD64 ABI calling convention used on many platforms and the Windows x64 calling convention. The performance of code produced by Cranelift is not yet impressive, though we have plans to fix that.

The core codegen crates have minimal dependencies, support no_std mode (see below), and do not require any host floating-point support, and do not use callstack recursion.

Cranelift does not yet perform mitigations for Spectre or related security issues, though it may do so in the future. It does not currently make any security-relevant instruction timing guarantees. It has seen a fair amount of testing and fuzzing, although more work is needed before it would be ready for a production use case.

Cranelift's APIs are not yet stable.

Cranelift currently requires Rust 1.37 or later to build.

Contributing

If you're interested in contributing to Cranelift: thank you! We have a contributing guide which will help you getting involved in the Cranelift project.

Planned uses

Cranelift is designed to be a code generator for WebAssembly, but it is general enough to be useful elsewhere too. The initial planned uses that affected its design are:

Building Cranelift

Cranelift uses a conventional Cargo build process.

Cranelift consists of a collection of crates, and uses a Cargo Workspace, so for some cargo commands, such as cargo test, the --all is needed to tell cargo to visit all of the crates.

test-all.sh at the top level is a script which runs all the cargo tests and also performs code format, lint, and documentation checks.

Building with no_std

The following crates support `no_std`, although they do depend on liballoc:

  • cranelift-entity
  • cranelift-bforest
  • cranelift-codegen
  • cranelift-frontend
  • cranelift-native
  • cranelift-wasm
  • cranelift-module
  • cranelift-preopt
  • cranelift

To use no_std mode, disable the std feature and enable the core feature. This currently requires nightly rust.

For example, to build `cranelift-codegen`:

cd cranelift-codegen
cargo build --no-default-features --features core

Or, when using cranelift-codegen as a dependency (in Cargo.toml):

[dependency.cranelift-codegen]
...
default-features = false
features = ["core"]

no_std support is currently "best effort". We won't try to break it, and we'll accept patches fixing problems, however we don't expect all developers to build and test no_std when submitting patches. Accordingly, the ./test-all.sh script does not test no_std.

There is a separate ./test-no_std.sh script that tests the no_std support in packages which support it.

It's important to note that cranelift still needs liballoc to compile. Thus, whatever environment is used must implement an allocator.

Also, to allow the use of HashMaps with no_std, an external crate called hashmap_core is pulled in (via the core feature). This is mostly the same as std::collections::HashMap, except that it doesn't have DOS protection. Just something to think about.

Log configuration

Cranelift uses the log crate to log messages at various levels. It doesn't specify any maximal logging level, so embedders can choose what it should be; however, this can have an impact of Cranelift's code size. You can use log features to reduce the maximum logging level. For instance if you want to limit the level of logging to warn messages and above in release mode:

[dependency.log]
...
features = ["release_max_level_warn"]

Editor Support

Editor support for working with Cranelift IR (clif) files: