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A Framework for End-to-End Verification and Evaluation of Register Allocators

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Static Analysis (SAS 2007)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 4634))

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Abstract

This paper presents a framework for designing, verifying, and evaluating register allocation algorithms. The proposed framework has three main components. The first component is MIRA, a language for describing programs prior to register allocation. The second component is FORD, a language that describes the results produced by the register allocator. The third component is a type checker for the output of a register allocator which helps to find bugs. To illustrate the effectiveness of the framework, we present RALF, a tool that allows a register allocator to be integrated into the gcc compiler for the StrongARM architecture. RALF simplifies the development of register allocators by sheltering the programmer from the internal complexity of gcc. MIRA and FORD’s features are sufficient to implement most of the register allocators currently in use and are independent of any particular register allocation algorithm or compiler. To demonstrate the generality of our framework, we have used RALF to evaluate eight different register allocators, including iterated register coalescing, linear scan, a chordal based allocator, and two integer linear programming approaches.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IBM India Research Laboratory, Delhi,  

    V. Krishna Nandivada

  2. UCLA Computer Science Department, University of California, Los Angeles,  

    Fernando Magno Quintão Pereira & Jens Palsberg

Authors
  1. V. Krishna Nandivada
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  2. Fernando Magno Quintão Pereira
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  3. Jens Palsberg
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Editor information

Hanne Riis Nielson Gilberto Filé

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© 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Nandivada, V.K., Pereira, F.M.Q., Palsberg, J. (2007). A Framework for End-to-End Verification and Evaluation of Register Allocators. In: Nielson, H.R., Filé, G. (eds) Static Analysis. SAS 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4634. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74061-2_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74061-2_10

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-74060-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-74061-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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