Partial Cross-Compilation and Mixed Execution for Accelerating Dynamic Binary Translation

Abstract: With the growing diversity of instruction set architectures (ISAs), cross-ISA program execution has become common. Dynamic binary translation (DBT) is the main solution but suffers from poor performance. Cross-compilation avoids emulation costs but is constrained by an "all-or-nothing" model-programs are either fully cross-compiled or entirely emulated. Complete cross-compilation is often unfeasible due to ISA-specific code or missing dependencies, leaving programs with high emulation overhead. We propose a hybrid execution system that combines compilation and emulation, featuring a selective function offloading mechanism. This mechanism establishes cross-environment calling channels, offloading eligible functions to the host for native execution to reduce DBT overhead. Key optimizations address offloading costs, enabling efficient hybrid operation. Built on LLVM and QEMU, the system works automatically for both applications and libraries. Evaluations show it achieves up to 13x speedups over existing DBT, with strong practical value.