DCG: an efficient, retargetable dynamic code generation system

  • Authors:
  • Dawson R. Engler;Todd A. Proebsting

  • Affiliations:
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA;University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ

  • Venue:
  • ASPLOS VI Proceedings of the sixth international conference on Architectural support for programming languages and operating systems
  • Year:
  • 1994

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Abstract

Dynamic code generation allows aggressive optimization through the use of runtime information. Previous systems typically relied on ad hoc code generators that were not designed for retargetability, and did not shield the client from machine-specific details. We present a system, dcg, that allows clients to specify dynamically generated code in a machine-independent manner. Our one-pass code generator is easily retargeted and extremely efficient (code generation costs approximately 350 instructions per generated instruction). Experiments show that dynamic code generation increases some application speeds by over an order of magnitude.