A Simple Graph-Based Intermediate Representation Cliff Click Michael Paleczny
[email protected] [email protected] understand, and easy to extend. Our goal is a repre- Abstract sentation that is simple and light weight while allowing We present a graph-based intermediate representation easy expression of fast optimizations. (IR) with simple semantics and a low-memory-cost C++ This paper discusses the intermediate representa- implementation. The IR uses a directed graph with la- beled vertices and ordered inputs but unordered outputs. tion (IR) used in the research compiler implemented as Vertices are labeled with opcodes, edges are unlabeled. part of the author’s dissertation [8]. The parser that We represent the CFG and basic blocks with the same builds this IR performs significant parse-time optimi- vertex and edge structures. Each opcode is defined by a zations, including building a form of Static Single As- C++ class that encapsulates opcode-specific data and be- signment (SSA) at parse-time. Classic optimizations havior. We use inheritance to abstract common opcode such as Conditional Constant Propagation [23] and behavior, allowing new opcodes to be easily defined from Global Value Numbering [20] as well as a novel old ones. The resulting IR is simple, fast and easy to use. global code motion algorithm [9] work well on the IR. These topics are beyond the scope of this paper but are 1. Introduction covered in Click’s thesis. Intermediate representations do not exist in a vac- The intermediate representation is a graph-based, uum. They are the stepping stone from what the pro- object-oriented structure, similar in spirit to an opera- grammer wrote to what the machine understands.