Linear scan register allocation on SSA form

  • Authors:

  • Christian Wimmer;Michael Franz

  • Affiliations:

  • University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA;University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 8th annual IEEE/ACM international symposium on Code generation and optimization
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

The linear scan algorithm for register allocation provides a good register assignment with a low compilation overhead and is thus frequently used for just-in-time compilers. Although most of these compilers use static single assignment (SSA) form, the algorithm has not yet been applied on SSA form, i.e., SSA form is usually deconstructed before register allocation. However, the structural properties of SSA form can be used to simplify the algorithm. With only one definition per variable, lifetime intervals (the main data structure) can be constructed without data flow analysis. During allocation, some tests of interval intersection can be skipped because SSA form guarantees non-intersection. Finally, deconstruction of SSA form after register allocation can be integrated into the resolution phase of the register allocator without much additional code. We modified the linear scan register allocator of the Java HotSpot client compiler so that it operates on SSA form. The evaluation shows that our simpler and faster version generates equally good or slightly better machine code.