Introduction

libbcc is an LLVM bitcode execution engine that compiles the bitcode to an in-memory executable. libbcc is versatile because:

• it implements both AOT (Ahead-of-Time) and JIT (Just-in-Time) compilation.
• Android devices demand fast start-up time, small size, and high performance at the same time. libbcc attempts to address these design constraints.
• it supports on-device linking. Each device vendor can supply their own runtime bitcode library (lib*.bc) that differentiates their system. Specialization becomes ecosystem-friendly.

libbcc provides:

• a just-in-time bitcode compiler, which translates the LLVM bitcode into machine code
• a caching mechanism, which can:
  • after each compilation, serialize the in-memory executable into a cache file. Note that the compilation is triggered by a cache miss.
  • load from the cache file upon cache-hit.

Highlights of libbcc are:

• libbcc supports bitcode from various language frontends, such as Renderscript, GLSL (pixelflinger2).

• libbcc strives to balance between library size, launch time and steady-state performance:

  • The size of libbcc is aggressively reduced for mobile devices. We customize and improve upon the default Execution Engine from upstream. Otherwise, libbcc's execution engine can easily become at least 2 times bigger.

  • To reduce launch time, we support caching of binaries. Just-in-Time compilation are oftentimes Just-too-Late, if the given apps are performance-sensitive. Thus, we implemented AOT to get the best of both worlds: Fast launch time and high steady-state performance.

    AOT is also important for projects such as NDK on LLVM with portability enhancement. Launch time reduction after we implemented AOT is signficant:

    Apps          libbcc without AOT       libbcc with AOT
                  launch time in libbcc    launch time in libbcc
    App_1            1218ms                   9ms
    App_2            842ms                    4ms
    Wallpaper:
      MagicSmoke     182ms                    3ms
      Halo           127ms                    3ms
    Balls            149ms                    3ms
    SceneGraph       146ms                    90ms
    Model            104ms                    4ms
    Fountain         57ms                     3ms
    

    AOT also masks the launching time overhead of on-device linking and helps it become reality.

  • For steady-state performance, we enable VFP3 and aggressive optimizations.

• Currently we disable Lazy JITting.

API

Basic:

• bccCreateScript - Create new bcc script
• bccRegisterSymbolCallback - Register the callback function for external symbol lookup
• bccReadBC - Set the source bitcode for compilation
• bccReadModule - Set the llvm::Module for compilation
• bccLinkBC - Set the library bitcode for linking
• bccPrepareExecutable - deprecated - Use bccPrepareExecutableEx instead
• bccPrepareExecutableEx - Create the in-memory executable by either just-in-time compilation or cache loading
• bccGetFuncAddr - Get the entry address of the function
• bccDisposeScript - Destroy bcc script and release the resources
• bccGetError - deprecated - Don't use this

Reflection:

• bccGetExportVarCount - Get the count of exported variables
• bccGetExportVarList - Get the addresses of exported variables
• bccGetExportFuncCount - Get the count of exported functions
• bccGetExportFuncList - Get the addresses of exported functions
• bccGetPragmaCount - Get the count of pragmas
• bccGetPragmaList - Get the pragmas

Debug:

• bccGetFuncCount - Get the count of functions (including non-exported)
• bccGetFuncInfoList - Get the function information (name, base, size)

Cache File Format

A cache file (denoted as *.oBCC) for libbcc consists of several sections: header, string pool, dependencies table, relocation table, exported variable list, exported function list, pragma list, function information table, and bcc context. Every section should be aligned to a word size. Here is the brief description of each sections:

• Header (MCO_Header) - The header of a cache file. It contains the magic word, version, machine integer type information (the endianness, the size of off_t, size_t, and ptr_t), and the size and offset of other sections. The header section is guaranteed to be at the beginning of the cache file.
• String Pool (MCO_StringPool) - A collection of serialized variable length strings. The strp_index in the other part of the cache file represents the index of such string in this string pool.
• Dependencies Table (MCO_DependencyTable) - The dependencies table. This table stores the resource name (or file path), the resource type (rather in APK or on the file system), and the SHA1 checksum.
• Relocation Table (MCO_RelocationTable) - not enabled
• Exported Variable List (MCO_ExportVarList) - The list of the addresses of exported variables.
• Exported Function List (MCO_ExportFuncList) - The list of the addresses of exported functions.
• Pragma List (MCO_PragmaList) - The list of pragma key-value pair.
• Function Information Table (MCO_FuncTable) - This is a table of function information, such as function name, function entry address, and function binary size. Besides, the table should be ordered by function name.
• Context - The context of the in-memory executable, including the code and the data. The offset of context should aligned to a page size, so that we can mmap the context directly into memory.

For furthur information, you may read bcc_cache.h, CacheReader.cpp, and CacheWriter.cpp for details.

JIT'ed Code Calling Conventions

1. Calls from Execution Environment or from/to within script:

   On ARM, the first 4 arguments will go into r0, r1, r2, and r3, in that order. The remaining (if any) will go through stack.

   For ext_vec_types such as float2, a set of registers will be used. In the case of float2, a register pair will be used. Specifically, if float2 is the first argument in the function prototype, float2.x will go into r0, and float2.y, r1.

   Note: stack will be aligned to the coarsest-grained argument. In the case of float2 above as an argument, parameter stack will be aligned to an 8-byte boundary (if the sizes of other arguments are no greater than 8.)

2. Calls from/to a separate compilation unit: (E.g., calls to Execution Environment if those runtime library callees are not compiled using LLVM.)

   On ARM, we use hardfp. Note that double will be placed in a register pair.