Designing programming languages for analyzability: a fresh look at pointer data structures

Author

Hendren, Laurie J. ; Gao, Guang R.

Author_Institution

Sch. of Comput. Sci., McGill Univ., Montreal, Que., Canada

fYear

1992

fDate

20-23 Apr 1992

Firstpage

242

Lastpage

251

Abstract

A programming language mechanism and associated compiler techniques which significantly enhance the analyzability of pointer-based data structures frequently used in nonscientific programs are proposed. The approach is based on exploiting two important properties of pointer data structures: structural inductivity and speculative traversability. Structural inductivity facilitates the application of a static interference analysis method for such pointer data structures based on path matrices, and speculative traversability is utilized by a novel loop unrolling technique for while loops that exploit fine-grain parallelism by speculatively traversing such data structures. The effectiveness of this approach is demonstrated by applying it to a collection of loops found in typical nonscientific C programs

Keywords

C language; data structures; parallel languages; parallel programming; program compilers; C programs; compiler techniques; fine-grain parallelism; loop unrolling technique; path matrices; pointer-based data structures; programming language mechanism; speculative traversability; static interference analysis method; structural inductivity; Computer architecture; Computer languages; Computer science; Data structures; Interference; Microprocessors; Parallel processing; Program processors; Reduced instruction set computing; Very large scale integration;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Computer Languages, 1992., Proceedings of the 1992 International Conference on

Conference_Location

Oakland, CA

Print_ISBN

0-8186-2585-6

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICCL.1992.185488

Filename

185488