A brute-force approach to automatic induction of machine code on CISC architectures

Abstract

The usual approach to address the brittleness of machine code in evolution is to constrain mutation and crossover to ensure syntactic closure. In the novel approach presented here we use no constraints on the operators. They all work blindly on the binaries in memory but we instead encapsulate the code and trap all resultingexceptions using the built-in error reportingmec hanisms which modern CPUs provide to the operatingsystem. Thus it is possible to return to very simple genetic operators with the objective of increased performance. Furthermore the instruction set used by evolved programmes is no longer limited by the genetic programming system but only by the CPU it runs on. The mappingb etween the evolution platform and the execution platform becomes almost complete, ensuringcorrect low-level behaviour of all CPU functions. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2002.