Abstract
Dynamic memory management in C programs can be rather costly. Multithreading introduces additional synchronization overhead of C memory management functions (malloc, free). In order to reduce this overhead, we extended Hoard - a state of the art memory allocator with the ability to allocate thread-local storage. Experimental results using the tool show runtime saving of up to 44% for a set of memory management benchmarks. To allow transparent usage of thread-local storage, we develop a compile-time algorithm, which conservatively detects allocation sites that can be replaced by thread-local allocations. Our static analysis is sound, i.e., every detected thread-local storage is indeed so, although we may fail to identify opportunities for allocating thread-local storage. Technically, we reduce the problem of estimating thread-local storage to the problem of escape analysis and provide an efficient escape analysis for C. We solve the problem of escape analysis for C using existing points-to analysis algorithms. Our solution is parameterized by the points-to information. We empirically evaluated the solution with two different methods for computing points-to information. The usage of scalable points-to analysis algorithms and the fact that our reduction is efficient, guarantees that our static analysis technique is scalable.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 137-155 |
Number of pages | 19 |
Journal | Lecture Notes in Computer Science |
Volume | 3443 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2005 |
Event | 14th International Conference on Compiler Construction, CC 2005, held as part of the Joint European Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2005 - Edinburgh, United Kingdom Duration: 4 Apr 2005 → 8 Apr 2005 |