Survey on Combinatorial Register Allocation and Instruction Scheduling

Register allocation (mapping variables to processor registers or memory) and instruction scheduling (reordering instructions to increase instruction-level parallelism) are essential tasks for generating efficient assembly code in a compiler. In the last three decades, combinatorial optimization has emerged as an alternative to traditional, heuristic algorithms for these two tasks. Combinatorial optimization approaches can deliver optimal solutions according to a model, can precisely capture trade-offs between conflicting decisions, and are more flexible at the expense of increased compilation time. This paper provides an exhaustive literature review and a classification of combinatorial optimization approaches to register allocation and instruction scheduling, with a focus on the techniques that are most applied in this context: integer programming, constraint programming, partitioned Boolean quadratic programming, and enumeration. Researchers in compilers and combinatorial optimization can benefit from identifying developments, trends, and challenges in the area; compiler practitioners may discern opportunities and grasp the potential benefit of applying combinatorial optimization

CARS: A New Code Generation Framework for Clustered ILP Processors

Clustered ILP processors are characterized by a large number of non-centralized on-chip resources grouped into clusters. Traditional code generation schemes for these processors consist of multiple phases for cluster assignment, register allocation and instruction scheduling. Most of these approaches need additional re-scheduling phases because they often do not impose finite resource constraints in all phases of code generation. These phase-ordered solutions have several drawbacks, resulting in the generation of poor performance code. Moreover, the iterative/back-tracking algorithms used in some of these schemes have large running times. In this report we present CARS, a code generation framework for Clustered ILP processors, which combines the cluster assignment, register allocation, and instruction scheduling phases into a single code generation phase, thereby eliminating the problems associated with phase-ordered solutions. The CARS algorithm explicitly takes into account all the resource constraints at each cluster scheduling step to reduce spilling and to avoid iterative re-scheduling steps. We also present a new on-the-fly register allocation scheme developed for CARS. We describe an implementation of the proposed code generation framework and the results of a performance evaluation study using the SPEC95/2000 and MediaBench benchmarks. (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-2000-55

A systematic integration of register allocation and instruction scheduling

In order to achieve high performance, processor architecture has become more and more complicated. As a result, compiler-time optimizations have become more and more important for the effective use of a complex processor. One of the promising compiler-time optimizations is the integration of register allocation and instruction scheduling based on register-reuse chains. In the previous approach, however, the generation of register-reuse chains was not completely systematic and consequently created many unnecessary dependencies that restrict instruction scheduling. This research proposes a new register allocation technique based on a systematic generation of register-reuse chains. The first phase of the proposed technique is to generate register-reuse chains that are optimal in the sense that no additional dependencies are created. Thus, register allocation can be done without restricting instruction scheduling. For the case when the optimal register-reuse chains require more than available registers, the second phase reduces the number of required registers by merging the register-reuse chains. A heuristic is developed for the second phase in order to reduce the additional dependencies created by merging chains. The first step of the second phase is to derive a conflict graph in which each node corresponds to a register-reuse chain, while an edge represents where the corresponding two chains cannot be merged. Applying a graph-coloring algorithm to the conflict graph, the number of chains can be effectively reduced. The final step of the second phase is to run the 0-1 knapsack algorithm to make the number of chains exactly the same as the number of available registers. The proposed register allocation is implemented in LCC (Local C Compiler). An instruction scheduler is also implemented in LCC and then integrated with the proposed register allocator. Evaluation results show that the proposed algorithm and heuristic effectively reduce the number of necessary registers

Percolation-based compiling for evaluation of parallelism and hardware design trade-offs

This thesis investigates parallelism and hardware design trade-offs of parallel and pipelined architectures. To explore these trade-offs we developed a retargetable compiler based on a set of powerful code transformations called Percolation Scheduling (PS) that map programs with real-time constraints and/or massive time requirements onto synchronous, parallel, high-performance or semi-custom architectures.High-performance is achieved through extraction of application inherent fine-grain parallelism and the use of a suitable architecture. Exploiting fine-grain parallelism is a critical part of exploiting all of the parallelism available in a given program, particularly since highly irregular forms of parallelism are often not visible at coarser levels and since the use of low-level parallelism has a multiplicative effect on the overall performance.To extract substantial parallelism from both the hardware and the compiler, we use a clean, highly parallel VLIW-like architecture that is synchronous, has multiple functional units and has a single program counter. The use of a hazard-free and homogeneous architecture does not result only in a better VLSI design but also considerably increases the compiler's ability to produce better code. To further enhance parallelism we modified the uni-cycle VLIW model and extended the transformations such that pipelined units that provide extra parallelism are used.Another approach presented is of resource constrained scheduling (RCS). Since the RCS problem is known to be NP-hard, in practice it may be solved only by a heuristic approach. We argue that using the heuristic after extraction of the unlimited-resources schedule may yield better results than if the heuristic has been applied at the beginning of the scheduling process.Through a series of benchmarks we evaluate hardware design trade-offs and show that speed-ups on average of one order of magnitude are feasible with sufficient functional units. However, when resources are limited we show that the number of functional units needed may be optimized for a particular suite of application programs

Fast, frequency-based, integrated register allocation and instruction scheduling

Master'sMASTER OF SCIENC

Combined instruction scheduling and register allocation

Master'sMASTER OF SCIENC

A VLSI architecture for enhancing software reliability

As a solution to the software crisis, we propose an architecture that supports and encourages the use of programming techniques and mechanisms for enhancing software reliability. The proposed architecture provides efficient mechanisms for detecting a wide variety of run-time errors, for supporting data abstraction, module-based programming and encourages the use of small protection domains through a highly efficient capability mechanism. The proposed architecture also provides efficient support for user-specified exception handlers and both event-driven and trace-driven debugging mechanisms. The shortcomings of the existing capability-based architectures that were designed with a similar goal in mind are examined critically to identify their problems with regard to capability translation, domain switching, storage management, data abstraction and interprocess communication. Assuming realistic VLSI implementation constraints, an instruction set for the proposed architecture is designed. Performance estimates of the proposed system are then made from the microprograms corresponding to these instructions based on observed characteristics of similar systems and language usage. A comparison of the proposed architecture with similar ones, both in terms of functional characteristics and low-level performance indicates the proposed design to be superior

Alocação global de registradores de endereçamento para referencias a vetores em DSPs

Orientador: Guido Costa Souza de AraujoDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de ComputaçãoResumo: O avanço tecnológico dos sistemas computacionais tem proporcionado o crescimento do mercado de sistemas dedicados, cada vez mais comuns no dia-a-dia das pessoas, como por exemplo em telefones celulares, palmtops e sistemas de controle automotivo. Devido às suas características, estas novas aplicações requerem sistemas que aliem baixo custo, alto desempenho e baixo consumo de potência. Uma das maneiras de atender a estes requisitos é utilizando processadores especializados. Contudo, a especialização na arquitetura dos processadores impõe novos desafios para o desenvolvimento de software para estes sistemas. Em especial, os compiladores - geralmente responsáveis pela otimização de código - precisam ser adaptados para produzir código eficiente para estes novos processadores. Na área de processamento de sinais digitais, como em telefonia celular, processadores especializados, denominados DSPs2, são amplamente utilizados. Estes processadores tipicamente possuem poucos registradores de propósito geral e modos de endereçamento bastante limitados. Além disso, muitas das suas aplicações envolvem o processamento de grandes seqüências de dados, as quais são geralmente armazenadas em vetores. Como resultado, o estudo de técnicas de otimização de referências a vetores tornou-se um problema central em compilação para DSPs. Este problema, denominado Global Array Reference Allocation (GARA), é o objeto central desta dissertação. O sub-problema central de GARA consiste em se determinar, para um dado conjunto de referências a vetores que serão alocadas a um mesmo registrador de endereçamento, o menor custo das instruções que são necessárias para manter este registrador com o endereço adequado em cada ponto do programa. Nesta dissertação, este sub-problema é modelado como um problema em grafos, e provado ser NP-difícil. Além disso, é proposto um algoritmo eficiente, baseado em programação dinâmica, para resolver este sub-problema de forma exata sob certas restrições. Com base neste algoritmo, duas técnicas são propostas para resolver o problema de GARA. Resultados experimentais, obtidos pela implementação destas técnicas no compilador GCC, comparam-nas com outros resultados da literatura. Os resultados demonstram a eficácia das técnicas propostas nesta dissertaçãoAbstract: The technological advances in computing systems have stimulated the growth of the embedded systems market, which is continuously becoming more ordinary in people's lives, for example in mobile phones, palmtops and automotive control systems. Because of their characteristics, these new applications demand the combination of low cost, high performance and low power consumption. One way to meet these constraints is through the design of specialized processors. However, processor specialization imposes new challenges to the development of software for these systems. In particular, compilers - generally responsible for code optimization - need to be adapted in order to produce efficient code for these new processors. In the digital signal processing arena, such as in cellular telephones, specialized processors, known as DSPs (Digital Signal Processors), are largely used. DSPs typically have few general purpose registers and very restricted addressing modes. In addition, many DSP applications include large data streams processing, which are usually stored in arrays. As a result, studing array reference optimization techniques became an important task in compiling for DSPs. This work studies this problem, known as Global Array Reference Allocation (GARA). The central GARA subproblem consists of determining, for a given set of array references to be allocated to the same address register, the minimum cost of the instructions required to keep this register with the correct address at alI program points. In this work, this subproblem is modeled as a graph theoretical problem and proved to be NP-hard. In addition, an efficient algorithm, based on dynamic programming, is proposed to optimally solve this subproblem under some restrictions. Based on this algorithm, two techniques to solve GARA are proposed. Experimental results, from the implementation of these techniques in the GCC compiler, compare them with previous work in the literature. The results show the effectiveness of the techniques proposed in this workMestradoMestre em Ciência da Computaçã