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International Workshop on Languages and Compilers for Parallel Computing

LCPC 1995: Languages and Compilers for Parallel Computing pp 515–533Cite as

Connection analysis: A practical interprocedural heap analysis for C

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1033))

Abstract

This paper presents a practical heap analysis technique, connection analysis, that can be used to disambiguate heap accesses in C programs. The technique is designed for analysing programs that allocate many disjoint objects in the heap such as dynamically-allocated arrays in scientific programs.

The method statically estimates connection matrices which encode the connection relationships between all heap-directed pointers at each program point. The results of the analysis can be used by parallelizing compilers to determine when two heap-allocated objects are guaranteed to be disjoint, and thus can be used to improve array dependence and interference analysis.

The method has been implemented as a context-sensitive interprocedural analysis in the McCAT optimizing/parallelizing C compiler. Experimental results are given to compare the accuracy of connection analysis versus a conservative estimate based on points-to analysis.

This work supported by NSERC, FCAR, and the EPPP project (financed by Industry Canada, Alex Parallel Computers, Digital Equipment Canada, IBM Canada and the Centre de recherche informatique de Montréal).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Science, McGill University, Montréal, Canada

    Rakesh Ghiya & Laurie J. Hendren

Authors
  1. Rakesh Ghiya
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  2. Laurie J. Hendren
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Editor information

Chua-Huang Huang Ponnuswamy Sadayappan Utpal Banerjee David Gelernter Alex Nicolau David Padua

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© 1996 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Ghiya, R., Hendren, L.J. (1996). Connection analysis: A practical interprocedural heap analysis for C. In: Huang, CH., Sadayappan, P., Banerjee, U., Gelernter, D., Nicolau, A., Padua, D. (eds) Languages and Compilers for Parallel Computing. LCPC 1995. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1033. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0014221

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0014221

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-60765-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49446-1

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