Designing the McCAT compiler based on a family of structured intermediate representations

Abstract

The effective exploitation of advanced technology for the development of the nextgeneration high-performance computers requires the integrated development of compiler techniques and architectural design. In order to provide a research tool with which we can experiment with both new architectural features and compiler support for those features, we have been developing the McGill Compiler/Architecture Testbed, McCAT.

In this paper we focus on the design of the McCAT compiler. The central theme of the paper is that the design of the family of intermediate representations should be driven by the analyses and transformations that are most important for effective compilation for architectures supporting some level of fine-grain parallelism. A primary objective of our design was to provide a natural way of supporting a framework for alias analysis that is general (handles scalars, arrays and pointers), accurate (provides accurate enough estimates for parallelizing transformations), and pervasive (alias information is available at the lowest level intermediate representation). In addition, we discuss how the design of the intermediate representations was motivated by the desire to support the use and development of analyzer-generator and code-generator generator tools that make the compiler flexible and useful for experimental development.

The work supported in part by FCAR, NSERC, and the McGill Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research.