Pointer and escape analysis for multithreaded programs

  • Authors:

  • Alexandru Salcianu;Martin Rinard

  • Affiliations:

  • Laboratory for Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA;Laboratory for Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA

  • Venue:
  • PPoPP '01 Proceedings of the eighth ACM SIGPLAN symposium on Principles and practices of parallel programming
  • Year:
  • 2001

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Abstract

This paper presents a new combined pointer and escape analysis for multithreaded programs. The algorithm uses a new abstraction called parallel interaction graphs to analyze the interactions between threads and extract precise points-to, escape, and action ordering information for objects accessed by multiple threads. The analysis is compositional, analyzing each method or thread once to extract a parameterized analysis result that can be specialized for use in any context. It is also capable of analyzing programs that use the unstructured form of multithreading present in languages such as Java and standard threads packages such as POSIX threads.We have implemented the analysis in the MIT Flex compiler for Java and used the extracted information to 1) verify that programs correctly use region-based allocation constructs, 2) eliminate dynamic checks associated with the use of regions, and 3) eliminate unnecessary synchronization. Our experimental results show that analyzing the interactions between threads significantly increases the effectiveness of the region analysis and region check elimination, but has little effect for synchronization elimination.