TY - GEN
T1 - Building a bridge between pointer aliases and program dependences
AU - Ross, John L.
AU - Sagiv, Mooly
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1998.
PY - 1998
Y1 - 1998
N2 - In this paper we present a surprisingly simple reduction of the program dependence problem to the may-alias problem. While both problems axe undecidable, providing a bridge between them has great practical importance. Program dependence information is used extensively in compiler optimizations, automatic program parallelizations, code scheduling in super-scalar machines, and in software engineering tools such as code slicers. When working with languages that support pointers and references, these systems are forced to make very conservative assumptions. This leads to many superfluous program dependences and limits compiler performance and the usability of software engineering tools. Fortunately, there are many algorithms for computing conservative approximations to the may-alias problem. The reduction has the important property of always computing conservative program dependences when used with a conservative may-alias algorithm. We believe that the simplicity of the reduction and the fact that it takes linear time may make it practical for realistic applications.
AB - In this paper we present a surprisingly simple reduction of the program dependence problem to the may-alias problem. While both problems axe undecidable, providing a bridge between them has great practical importance. Program dependence information is used extensively in compiler optimizations, automatic program parallelizations, code scheduling in super-scalar machines, and in software engineering tools such as code slicers. When working with languages that support pointers and references, these systems are forced to make very conservative assumptions. This leads to many superfluous program dependences and limits compiler performance and the usability of software engineering tools. Fortunately, there are many algorithms for computing conservative approximations to the may-alias problem. The reduction has the important property of always computing conservative program dependences when used with a conservative may-alias algorithm. We believe that the simplicity of the reduction and the fact that it takes linear time may make it practical for realistic applications.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/84947728179
U2 - 10.1007/bfb0053573
DO - 10.1007/bfb0053573
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AN - SCOPUS:84947728179
SN - 3540643028
SN - 9783540643029
T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
SP - 221
EP - 235
BT - Programming Languages and Systems - 7th European Symposium on Programming, ESOP 1998 Held as Part of the Joint European Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 1998, Proceedings
A2 - Hankin, Chris
PB - Springer Verlag
T2 - 7th European Symposium on Programming, ESOP 1998 Held as Part of the Joint European Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 1998
Y2 - 28 March 1998 through 4 April 1998
ER -