Hardware Mechanisms for Distributed Dynamic Software Analysis

To my parents, Gail and Russell Greathouse. Without their support throughout my life, I would never have made it this far. ii Acknowledgments First and foremost, I must thank my advisor, Professor Todd Austin, for his help and guid-ance throughout my graduate career. I started graduate school with the broad desire to “research computer architecture, ” but under Professor Austin’s watch, I have been able to hone this into work that interests us both and has real applications. His spot-on advice about choosing topics, performing research, writing papers, and giving talks has been an invaluable introduction to the research world. The members of my committee, Professors Robert Dick, Jason Flinn, and Scott Mahlke, also deserve special gratitude. Their insights, comments, and suggestions have immea-surably improved this dissertation. Together their expertise spans low-level hardware to systems software and beyond. This meant that I needed to ensure that any of my ideas were defensible from all sides