Intel® Software Development Emulator Release Notes

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	June 29, 2011 12:00 AM PDT

2011-12-15 version 4.46

Linux 3.x is supported
Better support for running on AVX-enabled hosts
All output files now begin "sde-" and end with ".txt" by default
Mix is faster and does more analysis of SIMD operations
Mix has line number support for the top blocks when the information is available in the application
The -ptr-chk option now checks the memory refernces of gather operations
Fixed support for file descriptor leak when exec'ing thousands of threads on Linux.
Misc other stability improvements.

2011-07-01 version 4.29

Support for the Haswell new instructions in the AVX programmers reference version 11.
Mix now includes category and instruction length histograms automatically so the corresponding knobs were removed.
Many other changes

2010-12-23 verison 3.89 (Linux only)

Fixed runtime libraries. Version 3.88 accidentally included runtime libraries that require a newer version of glibc than is present on older systems (like RHEL4).

2010-12-21 version 3.88

Support for the post-32nm processor instructions for the processor codenamed Ivybridge in the 008 revision of the Intel(R) AVX programmers reference document
Many stability improvements
"sde -thelp" goes to stdout, not stderr
mix has a "-demangle 0" option to turn off demangling
xed disassembler handles uninitialized code sections in windows binaries
xed supports dwarf line number information with the -line knob on linux.
mix has improved memory efficiency
To debug on linux, you no longer need the -avx-gdb knob but you must use gdb 7.2 or later which supports a new XML remote-debug protocol.

2010-03-11 version 3.09

When pin or sde crashes due to bugs in user applications, the output of the circular buffer use for -itrace-execute (etc.) was not being dumped to disk. It is now.
Fixed circular buffer used for -itrace-execute and -itrace-execute-emulate. It was not initializing the circular buffer when -itrace-lines was used and would just crash immediately. In addition to *actually* making the feature work, I sped it up immensely by reusing allocated string buffers.
Fixed 14 scalar AVX instructions that were referencing too much memory (128b instead of 32b or 64b).
Made the xsave emulator be enabled all the time even when xsave is present on the hardware. One can disable it with '-xsave 0'.
All output log / stats file names now end in .txt by default.
Added a descriptive header to the top of the AVX/SSE transition output file.
debugtrace now print mmx (and x87) register values
vmaskmov* instructions are now implemented in a thread-safe way.
vpmov[sz]x instructions now correctly reference less memory to avoid extra page accesses.
New memory pointer checker. This option check all memory references for accessibility before the user application program is allowed to access memory. There is also a null pointer checker which previously would only check AVX instructions. The null checker writes to stderr (if accessible) and to a file sde-null-check.out.txt. The pointer checker writes to stderr (if accessible) and to a file sde-ptr-check.out.txt. The new knobs are: -null-check and -ptr-check
enforcing VL=128 on any AVX scalar instructions.
fixed for the -no-avx and -no-aes knobs in the sde driver
xed: many corner case bugs fixed after yet another validation review

2010-02-08 version 3.00

Changed output files to have .txt suffix.
debugtrace prints x87 and mmx registers
thread-safety fix for vmaskmov* instructions
reduced amount of memory referenced by vpmov[sz]* instructions.
New memory pointer checker (See -ptr-check and -null-check knobs)
Added VL=128 requirement for AVX scalar instructions.
Fixed knobs -no-avx and -no-aes in the sde front end driver

2009-12-31 version 2.94
Major update.

Better support for recent linux distributions, like Ubuntu 9.10.
Better support for debugging with GDB on linux.
Using GDB 7.0.50, and "sde -debug -avx-gdb -- yourapp", gdb can directly obtain AVX register values without requiring "monitor yreg N" or "monitor yregs" commands.
Windows version supports latest dbghelp.dll 6.11.1.404
Fixes for paths with spaces
Using Pin's "safecopy" mechanism to access user memory
Spelling fixes
Tool arguments grouped more sensibly; See the output of "sde -thelp"
Support for AVX unmasked zero divide exceptions on Windows
AVX/SSE transition tracing feature with -ast-trace knob
AVX/SSE transition checker emits previous block information
CPUID leaf-zero emulation support
Alignment checker upgrades
XED disassembler supports windows debugging symbols (via dbghelp.dll)
Fix for Nan case in SSE4.1 roundss on linux only
Fix for SSE4 PEXTRW gpr,xmm
More CPUID feature knobs for SSE technologies
Fix for case emulation of FMA single precision that affected accuracy
Support for FZ and DAZ in FMA routines
Data watch point support
Fix for MXCSR.OE and IE for vcomiss/vucomiss an Nan inputs
New chip-check feature to restrict instructions to specific chips. See "sde -thelp"
Fast icounting feature (faster than using mix)
Fixes for Nan issues on windows with sqrt, mul, div, sub and cmp - it was quieting SNANs.
Upgraded pin can execute instructions with illegal instructions and an application-installed handler will be invoked.
New -itrace* knobs
Circular buffer support in debugtrace