Incremental global reoptimization of programs

  • Authors:

  • Lori L. Pollock;Mary Lou Soffa

  • Affiliations:

  • Univ. of Delaware, Newark;Univ. of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA

  • Venue:
  • ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS)
  • Year:
  • 1992

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Abstract

Although optimizing compilers have been quite successful in producing excellent code, two factors that limit their usefulness are the accompanying long compilation times and the lack of good symbolic debuggers for optimized code. One approach to attaining faster recompilations is to reduce the redundant analysis that is performed for optimization in response to edits, and in particulars, small maintenance changes, without affecting the quality of the generated code. Although modular programming with separate compilation aids in eliminating unnecessary recompilation and reoptimization, recent studies have discovered that more efficient code can be generated by collapsing a modular program through procedure inlining. To avoid having to reoptimize the resultant large procedures, this paper presents techniques for incrementally incorporating changes into globally optimized code. An algorithm is given for determining which optimizations are no longer safe after a program change, and for discovering which new optimizations can be performed in order to maintain a high level of optimization. An intermediate representation is incrementally updated to reflect the current optimizations in the program. Analysis is performed in response to changes rather than in preparation for possible changes, so analysis is not wasted if an edit has no far-reaching effects. The techniques developed in this paper have also been exploited to improve on the current techniques for symbolic debugging of optimized code.