Architecture Independent Test Templates for Virtual Machines and Microprocessors

To ensure the quality of compilers, virtual machines and microprocessors, testing with the use of test programs is applied. Test templates, i.e. parameterized descriptions of test programs, are used to reduce the resources spent on test creation. For verification of test objects with different architectures, test templates testing the same functional properties can be used. A task of describing templates in an architecture-independent form and its customization for a target architecture arises. The paper proposes a method for creating and using architecture independent test templates. The method is as follows. Architecture dependent constructs that are needed to describe a test template are defined. Based on these constructs, an architecture independent test template is created. Then the template is customized to the architecture of the object under test by describing implementations of the architecture dependent constructs. Realizations of the constructs can be described by different sets of architecturally dependent operations, differing both by the type of data used and by the operations used. Different strategies for selecting the implementations to be used, such as full brute force, random selection, and others, can be applied in the test templates. Providing an interface as the architecture dependent constructs allows the use of third-party generators to create the architecturally independent templates. Rewriting the implementations of the constructs allows the test programs to be derived from the given templates for new architectures. This method was successfully applied to check optimizations in a virtual machine compiler.