Patent ID: 8255886

Claim:
A processing system-implemented method for analyzing computer instructions, comprising: disassembling, by a processing system, a stream of machine instructions into a stream of assembly language instructions, wherein the stream of assembly language instructions comprises single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) instructions involving multiple data items; automatically creating, by the processing system, an instruction object “M” to represent a SIMD instruction “M” from the SIMD instructions involving multiple data items, and automatically creating an instruction object “N” to represent a SIMD instruction “N” from the SIMD instructions involving multiple data items, wherein instruction objects “M” and “N” each comprises (a) multiple data objects corresponding to the multiple data items of the respective SIMD instruction and (b) at least one operator object corresponding to an operation of the respective SIMD instruction; automatically assigning, by the processing system, different visual characteristics to at least two of the multiple data objects of instruction object “M”; automatically determining, by the processing system, whether any data items of SIMD instruction “N” are affected by any data items of SIMD instruction “M”; in response to determining that a particular data item of SIMD instruction “N” is affected by a source data item of SIMD instruction “M”, automatically assigning, by the processing system, a visual characteristic assigned to a source object to a target object, wherein the source object is the data object of instruction object “M” that corresponds to the source data item, and the target object is the data object of instruction object “N” that corresponds to the particular data item; and presenting, by the processing system, in a user interface, visual representations of data objects of instruction objects “M” and “N” with visual characteristics assigned to the data objects.