A global progressive register allocator

This paper describes a global progressive register allocator, a register allocator that uses an expressive model of the register allocation problem to quickly find a good allocation and then progressively find better allocations until a provably optimal solution is found or a preset time limit is reached. The key contributions of this paper are an expressive model of global register allocation based on multicommodity network flows that explicitly represents spill code optimization, register preferences, copy insertion, and constant rematerialization; two fast, but effective, heuristic allocators based on this model; and a more elaborate progressive allocator that uses Lagrangian relaxation to compute the optimality of its allocations. Our progressive allocator demonstrates code size improvements as large as 16.75% compared to a traditional graph allocator. On average, we observe an initial improvement of 3.47%, which increases progressively to 6.84% as more time is permitted for co...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: PLDI
• Authors: David Ryan Koes, Seth Copen Goldstein
• Keywords: PLDI 2006, Programming Languages, Progressive Allocator, Register Allocation, Register Allocator