QTrace: An interface for customizable full system instrumentation

This work presents QTrace, an open-source instrumentation extension API developed on top of QEMU. QTrace instruments unmodified applications and OS binaries for uni- and multi-processor systems, enabling custom, full-system instrumentation tools for the x86 guest architecture. Computer architects can use QTrace to study whole program execution including system-level code. This paper motivates the need for QTrace, illustrates what QTrace can do, and discusses how QEMU was modified to implement QTrace.