Re: Purify patent (was Re: gawk memory leak)

    Paul David Fox wrote:
        >> I did some research into the Purify patent. There are
        >> actually 3 inter-related ones. I havent got the reference
        >> to hand but the substance of the patent is 'Use of object
        >> code modification to facilitate memory tracking and
        >> leakage detection'.


Elan Feingold <elan@jeeves.net> writes:
> > This surprises me, as Digital has a toolkit out there called ATOM
> > (the OM standing for "Object Modification") and it ships a client,
> > who's name escapes me at the moment, that has similar features as
> > Purify. Anyone know the scoop on this?


Sailesh Krishnamurthy wrote:
> Digital has spun off that group into Tracepoint Technologies
> (http://www.tracepoint.com) - I believe their patent is
> different. It's called "Binary Code Instrumentation" - the difference
> being you instrument a linked executable, as opposed to instrumenting
> unlinked object files as is the case with Purify.


I dont think it matters whether you instrument object code or .exe
code for this patent. Its only the two combined acts of
'instrumentation' and 'memory leak detection'. (I maybe wrong - I
cannot remember what I did read).


But note that Purify use a different mechanism depending on the
platform and the reason for this is that instrumenting a .EXE is the
ideal scenario but on some platforms the compiler generated code
cannot be instrumented (because of things like embedded switch-jump
tables in the middle of real assembler instructions).


Its quite likely DEC have enough patents of their own to avoid
a war with Purify and the things DEC are doing are not in the
same area.


Unfortunately the things DEC are doing are not as interesting
as a memory leak detector and even Purifies is semantically-challenged.


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