Scaling Java points-to analysis using SPARK

  • Authors:
  • Ondřej Lhoták;Laurie Hendren

  • Affiliations:
  • McGill University, Montreal, Canada;McGill University, Montreal, Canada

  • Venue:
  • CC'03 Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Compiler construction
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

Most points-to analysis research has been done on different systems by different groups, making it difficult to compare results, and to understand interactions between individual factors each group studied. Furthermore, points-to analysis for Java has been studied much less thoroughly than for C, and the tradeoffs appear very different. We introduce SPARK, a flexible framework for experimenting with points-to analyses for Java. SPARK supports equality- and subset-based analyses, variations in field sensitivity, respect for declared types, variations in call graph construction, off-line simplification, and several solving algorithms. SPARK is composed of building blocks on which new analyses can be based. We demonstrate SPARK in a substantial study of factors affecting precision and efficiency of subset-based points-to analyses, including interactions between these factors. Our results show that SPARK is not only flexible and modular, but also offers superior time/space performance when compared to other points-to analysis implementations.