Phase-ordering in optimizing compilers Matthieu Qu´eva Kongens Lyngby 2007 IMM-MSC-2007-71 Technical University of Denmark Informatics and Mathematical Modelling Building 321, DK-2800 Kongens Lyngby, Denmark Phone +45 45253351, Fax +45 45882673
[email protected] www.imm.dtu.dk Summary The “quality” of code generated by compilers largely depends on the analyses and optimizations applied to the code during the compilation process. While modern compilers could choose from a plethora of optimizations and analyses, in current compilers the order of these pairs of analyses/transformations is fixed once and for all by the compiler developer. Of course there exist some flags that allow a marginal control of what is executed and how, but the most important source of information regarding what analyses/optimizations to run is ignored- the source code. Indeed, some optimizations might be better to be applied on some source code, while others would be preferable on another. A new compilation model is developed in this thesis by implementing a Phase Manager. This Phase Manager has a set of analyses/transformations available, and can rank the different possible optimizations according to the current state of the intermediate representation. Based on this ranking, the Phase Manager can decide which phase should be run next. Such a Phase Manager has been implemented for a compiler for a simple imper- ative language, the while language, which includes several Data-Flow analyses. The new approach consists in calculating coefficients, called metrics, after each optimization phase. These metrics are used to evaluate where the transforma- tions will be applicable, and are used by the Phase Manager to rank the phases.