olibc: Another C Library optimized for Embedded Linux

olibc: Another C Library
optimized for embedded Linux

Jim Huang ( 黃敬群 ) <jserv@0xlab.org>
Developer, 0xlab
Feb 22, 2013 / Embedded Linux Conference

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What I will discuss about...

• I learned a bit about the toolchain and system library
optimizations while developing Android based
projects.
• It might be a good idea to “reuse” them in ordinary
embedded Linux projects.
• Therefore, I plan to emphasize on how to leverage
the engineering efforts originally from Android world.
– Review C library characteristics
– Toolchain optimizations
– Build configurable runtime
– Performance evaluation

Related talks

• Android Builders Summit 2013
– LLVMLinux: Compiling Android with LLVM - Behan
Webster, Converse in Code - Behan Webster

• Embedded Linux Conference 2013
– Toybox: Writing a new Linux Command Line from
Scratch - Rob Landley
– System-wide Memory Management without Swap -
Howard Cochran
– Bringing kconfig to EGLIBC - Khem Raj

Agenda (1) Take from Android
(2) olibc: configurable
(3) Optimizations
(4) Action Items

Take from Android
bionic libc, dynamic linker, debugging facilities

We know, Android is not Linux, but...

≠
We're __taking__ someting useful
back to embedded Linux.

from Rob Landley's talk
• “Dalvik is the new ROM basic"
• …
• “why not extend toolbox/bionic instead of replace?
– just enough to run dalvik. (The new ROM BASIC.)"

Our "something useful" is the base to launch Dalvik Virtual Machine
and the above Android Framework

Source: http://www.landley.net/talks/celf-2013.txt
Source: http://www.landley.net/talks/celf-2013.txt

Why build bionic-derived libc?

• License
– glibc (LGPL), uClibc (LGPL), dietlibc (GPL), musl (MIT)

• Optimized for major (consumer) targets
– ARMv7 + MIPS + Intel Atom optimizations
– glibc (good arm/mips/atom), uClibc (simpler
arm/mips/x86), dietlbc (N/A), musl (simple x86)

• API coverage is getting more complete by versions.
• Catch up with latest SoC technologies
– Contributors: Google, Intel, Qualcomm, Texas
Instruments, NVIDIA, ST-Ericsson, Linaro, MIPS, etc.
• The problem is, Android is not a community project.

“Copyleft is dying.
GPLv2 was category killer, synonymous with copyleft." – Rob Landley

Goals of olibc

• Create small, fast, free, and standard-compliant
implementation for C Library.
• Offer configurable levels of functionality and should
scale from tiny embedded Linux up to general
purpose environments such as Android-powered
smart devices.
• Provide system utilities around C library
– benchmarking, validation, prelinker, ...

• Introduce steady security, performance, and
comformance fixes.

Programming Model
loading
SoC
#include <stdio.h> Memory
int main() {
Execute
printf(“Hello Wolrdn”); Write
return 0; back
} “Stack” Section

hello.c Memory
Reg
(Source) “BSS” Section
access
arm-gcc
(Compiler) execute
“Data” Section

decode

“Text” Section PC fetch

hello runtime
(ELF)

Let's review the programming model...

Programming Model (multi-threaded)
Bare-metal Multi-Thread

Stack Stack Stack
“Stack” Section

………………………………
………
BSS

“BSS” Section

“Data” Section
“Data” Section

Text Text Text
“Text” Section

scheduler

Programming Model (multi-process)
Multi-Process [Linux] Multi-Process [Android]

application application application

application application application

Framework & VM

middleware & Library
Library

scheduler scheduler

kernel kernel

bionic libc

• Small C Library implementation
– mixture of NetBSD (libc) and FreeBSD (libm)

• BSD license
• Partially POSIX compatible; not compatible with glibc
• No SysV IPC support (due to Binder IPC)
• Support for ARM (w/ Thumb), x86, MIPS
• Fast pthread implementation (based on futexes)
• Small footprint
glibc 2.11 : /lib/libc.so → 1,208,224 bytes
uClibc 0.9.30 : /lib/libuClibc.so → 424,235 bytes
bionic 2.1 : /system/lib/libc.so → 243,948 bytes

Not in bionic libc

• Complete wide chars
• C++ exceptions (limited since NDKr5)
• Full C++ STL
• Full POSIX Thread

Memory Map [Android pre-4.x]

0x00000000
0x00008000
app_process

0x40000000
Java apps and No memory with execution attribute
resource data
File mapping direction
*.apk,*.jar,*.ttf etc.

Some memory are of execution attribute
Shared lib; libc,
libwecore etc. File mapping direction
various .so files
0xB0000000
/system/bin/linker

Stack
0xBEFFFFFF

Memory related changes

• ASLR (Address space layout randomization) since
Android 4.0
– help protect system and third party applications from
exploits due to memory-management issues
– PIE (Position Independent Executable) is added since
Android 4.1
– original ELF prelinker was removed

• AddressSanitizer since 4.1

AddressSanitizer vs. Valgrind

Valgrin AddressSanitizer
Heap out-of-bounds Yes Yes
Stack out-of-bounds No Yes
Global out-of-bounds No Yes
Use-after-free Yes Yes
Use-after-return No Sometimes/Yes
Uninitialized reads Yes No
Overhead 10x-30x 1.5x-3x
Host platform Linux, Mac OS X where (latest)
GCC/LLVM runs

AddressSanitizer
=================================================================
==7161== ERROR: AddressSanitizer global-buffer-overflow on address 0x2a002194 at
pc 0x2a00051b bp 0xbeeafb0c sp 0xbeeafb08
READ of size 4 at 0x2a002194 thread T0
#0 0x40022a4b (/system/lib/libasan_preload.so+0x8a4b)
#1 0x40023e77 (/system/lib/libasan_preload.so+0x9e77)
#2 0x4001c98f (/system/lib/libasan_preload.so+0x298f)
#3 0x2a000519 (/system/bin/global-out-of-bounds+0x519)
#4 0x4114371d (/system/lib/libc.so+0x1271d)
0x2a002194 is located 4 bytes to the right of global variable 'global_array
(external/test/global-out-of-bounds.cpp)' (0x2a002000) of size 400
Shadow byte and word:
0x05400432: f9
0x05400430: 00 00 f9 f9 int global_array[100] = {-1};
More shadow bytes:
0x05400420: 00 00 00 00 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
0x05400424: 00 00 00 00
0x05400428: 00 00 00 00
return global_array[argc + 100]; /* BOOM */
0x0540042c: 00 00 00 00 }
=>0x05400430: 00 00 f9 f9
0x05400434: f9 f9 f9 f9
0x05400438: 00 00 00 00
0x0540043c: 00 00 00 00
0x05400440: 00 00 00 00
Stats: 0M malloced (0M for red zones) by 35 calls
Stats: 0M realloced by 0 calls

Shared library issues

• Older Android dynamic linker has an arbitrary low
(for larger applications such as GStreamer,
LibreOffice) limit on number of shared libs: 128
– Until Sep 12, 2012, dynamically allocating soinfo-structs
in linker is implemented.

• Mozilla: Use a hacked-up copy of the bionic linker
in our own code, in addition to the system one.
– two run-time linkers not aware of each others ended up a
failure

C++ Integrations
C++ Exception C++ RTTI Standard Library

system No No No

gabi++ No Yes No

stlport No Yes Yes

gnustl Yes Yes Yes

• olibc provides stlport, which depends on wchar
support in libc.

Debuggerd

• Nice embedded-specific crash handler
– used on all Android devices
• Crash report data placed in log/tombstone
• Debuggerd also facilitates connecting debugger to
dying process
– Can halt and wait for gdb to attach to the process

• Apache license

How Debuggerd works
• Debuggerd acts as a crash-handling daemon
• Adds default signal handler to each process, which handles
any signals that generate core
– included in bionic, thus every application gets it
• Signal handler captures deadly signal and contacts
debuggerd
• Debuggerd records information using ptrace (registers,
stack, memory areas), and /proc
• Has builtin ARM stack unwinder for generating a backtrace
• Automatically rotates a fixed number of crash reports
• Reference:
https://wiki.linaro.org/WorkingGroups/ToolChain/Outputs/LibunwindDebuggerd

unwinding

• Unwinding = processing stack and memory image
to create a backtrace
• Backtrace is very compact - summarizes stack
information nicely
• Local variables usually not available
• Different methods available, depending on
compilation flags

Crash Handler

• New crash handler written by Tim Bird of Sony
– Based on debuggerd from Android
• Implemented as a core file handler
• Writes crash report to a “tombstone_0x” file in
/tmp/tombstones
• Writes information from /proc, ptrace, and kernel
log buffer
• Also writes some information to the kernel log
• Information: http://elinux.org/Crash_handler

License Issue
• THE BIONIC LIBRARY: DID GOOGLE WORK AROUND
THE GPL? brownrudnick, Mar 2011
• Bionic Revisited: What the Summary Judgment Ruling in
Oracle v. Google Means for Android and the GPL,
brownrudnick, Nov 2011
– Google tries to “clean” Linux kernel headers to avoid the
GPL

olibc: configurable
Kernel

Kernel headers

C Library

Applications

Major problem: broken toolchain

External Toolchain Issues

• CodeSourcery Toolchain doesn't use gold linker,
and Android's original build flags are a bit
aggressive.
– e.g. ICF (Identical Code Folding), which is gold only
redundancy elimination
– Option: --icf (known to bring 5% size reduction)

• Default link script doesn't take olibc into
consideration.
• Sometimes, toolchains have optimization bugs

Build Android compatible toolchain

• Barebone-style building:
– Inside Android tree
– Specify all system and bionic header file paths, shared
library, paths, libgcc.a, crtbegin_*.o, crtend_*.o, etc.

• Standalone-style building:
– Convenient for native developers:
arm-xxx-eabi-gcc -mandroid --sysroot=<path-to-sysroot > hello.c -o hello
(<path to sysroot> is a pre-compiled copy of Bionic)

olibc: Configurable and Optimized

• Configured using the Kconfig language pioneered by
the Linux kernel
– Extensions, Library settings, crash handler, ...
• Encapulate the Android build system to become
simpler and dedicated one.
• Allow full optimization techniques originally applied by
Android including implementation and toolchain
– SoC enhancements
• Use repo to manage source tree
– repo init -u https://github.com/olibc/manifest.git
– repo sync

olibc: Another C Library optimized for Embedded Linux

Build Tweaks: Symbol Visibility
1
Linux-arm.mk
-fvisibi-lity=hidden
Android.mk 1. Goal: Visibility of a function should match the
API spec in programmer’s design.
2
2. Solution:
__attribute__((visibility(“public”)))
*.h
function decl
First, systematically applying the 5 steps.
Fundamentally, need to go through the
APIs of each library:
3  Consciously decide what should be
$ make -j5 “public” and what shouldn’t.

3. Result: ~500 KB savings for opencore libs
4
/tmp/GoOgLe.o: In function foo
4. Key: The whole hidden functions can be
src.c: undefined reference to “z”
garbage collected if unused locally:
Until no failure
5 5. Toolchain’s options:
__attribute__((visibility(“public”)))
-ffunction-sections,
Int z;
-Wl,--gcsections,

Build Tweaks: code size
(unit: byte)
• Android default inline options: GCC-4.2.1 GCC-4.4.3 GCC-4.4.3
(tuned inline options)
-finline-functions
-fno-inline-functions-called-once Native 22,087,436
system
image
23,839,29 23,027,032
1

Use genetic algorithm to find best-fit:
-finline
-fno-inline-functions
-finline-functions-called-once
--param max-inline-insns-auto=62
--param inline-unit-growth=0
--param large-unit-insns=0
--param inline-call-cost=4
GCC-4.2.1 GCC-4.4.3 GCC-4.4.3(tuned)
Native system image size

Source: Smaller and Faster Android, Shih-wei Liao, Google Inc.

Instrumentation-based FDO (Feedback-Directed
Optimization)
1. Build twice.
2. Find representative input
3. Instrumentation run: 2~3X slower but this perturbation is OK, because
threading in Android is not that time sensitive
4. 1 profile per file, dumped at application exit.

arm-xxx-eabi-gcc 3 Optimized
Optimized
arm-xxx-eabi-gcc
arm-xxx-eabi-gcc 1 arm-xxx-eabi-gcc Binary
Binary
–fprofile-generate=./profile –fprofile-use=./profile.zip
–fprofile-use=./profile.zip
–fprofile-generate=./profile with FDO
with FDO

Instrumented
Instrumented
Binary
Binary

2 Run the instrumented
Run the instrumented
binary
binary Profile.zip
Profile.zip

Representative
Representative
Input Data
Input Data

FDO Performance
• Global hotness for ARM (HOT_BB_COUNT_FRACTION, Branch
prediction routine for the GNU compiler, gcc-4.4.x/gcc/predict.c)
– 1% improvement on Android's skia library as belows.
– smaller effects on smaller Android benchmarks.
(unit: bytes)
Content Work default fdo-default fdo-modified

Size of libskia 7,879,646 7,396,032 7,319,668

Size reduction 0.00% 6.14% 7.11%

Stdev (over 100 runs) 0.28 0.63 0.26

Speedup 1 0.98 0.97


Dynamic Linker Optimizations

• Why?
– The major reason to optimize dynamic linker is to speed
up application startup time.

• How?
– Implement GNU style hash support for bionic linker
– Prelinker improvements: incremental global prelinking

(normalized) Dynamic Link time

1
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5 lp
0.4 gp
re.gp
0.3
re.pe.gp
0.2 re.pe.pgp.gp
0.1 re.pe.pgp.gp.are
0

(normalized) Symbol Lookup number

1
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5 elf.lp
0.4 elf.gp
elf.re.gp
0.3 elf.re.pe.gp
0.2 elf.re.pe.pgp.gp
0.1 elf.re.pe.pgp.gp.are

0

DT_GNU_HASH: visible dynamic linking improvement =
Better hash function (few collisions)
+ Drop unnecessary entry from hash
+ Bloom filter

void foo (){
libc.so printf(“fooooo”);
printf bar();
}

libfoo.so
foo
bar

libfoo.so
DT_GNU_HASH DT_HASH
foo foo
bar bar
printf

GNU-style Hash

SysV ELF hash

name 2sym collision # 3sym collision # 3+sym collision #
sysv 1749 5
libiberty 42
dcache 37 GNU-style hash
djb2 29
sdbm 39
djb3 31
rot 337 39 61
sax 34
fnv 40
oat 30

Experiment by Jakub Jelinek
http://cygwin.com/ml/libc-alpha/2006-06/msg00098.html

Symbol lookup fail# gnu filtered by bloom
s # hash
in ELF
gnu.gp 3758 23702 19950 23310 18234(78%)

gnu.gp.re 3758 20544 16792 19604 14752(75%)

gnu.lp 61750 460996 399252 450074 345032(76%)

gnu.lp.re 61750 481626 419882 448492 342378(76%)

H = {x, y, z} = hash functions
Hash function may collision
→ Bloom filter may got false positives
Bit array

NOTE: Android 4.0 removes the support of prelinker,
but gnu style hash is still useful.

TODO

• Use eglibc-like Option Group
– based on POSIX.1-2001 specifications
• Comply with relevant standards
• Resolve external toolchain issues
– Allow arm-none-eabi- and arm-none-linux-gnueabi-
– Don't depend on prebuilt toolchain anymore

• Collaboration: crosstool-ng, buildroot, yocto, ...
• Validation: improve unit-test, bench, ABI test
• More SoC enhancements
• Extensions
– BioMP: Migrating OpenMP into Bionic
http://code.google.com/p/biomp/

Reference

• olibc hosted at GitHub: http://olibc.github.com/
• Optimizing Android Performance with GCC Compiler, Geunsik
Lim
• Embedded-Appropriate Crash Handling in Linux, Tim Bird
• Smaller and Faster Android, Shih-wei Liao, Google Inc.

http://0xlab.org

olibc: Another C Library optimized for Embedded Linux

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