Lightweight reference affinity analysis

Previous studies have shown that array regrouping and structure splitting significantly improve data locality. The most effective technique relies on profiling every access to every data element. The high overhead impedes its adoption in a general compiler. In this paper, we show that for array regrouping in scientific programs, the overhead is not needed since the same benefit can be obtained by pure program analysis. We present an interprocedural analysis technique for array regrouping. For each global array, the analysis summarizes the access pattern by access-frequency vectors and then groups arrays with similar vectors. The analysis is context sensitive, so it tracks the exact array access. For each loop or function call, it uses two methods to estimate the frequency of the execution. The first is symbolic analysis in the compiler. The second is lightweight profiling of the code. The same interprocedural analysis is used to cumulate the overall execution frequency by considering ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: ICS
• Authors: Xipeng Shen, Yaoqing Gao, Chen Ding, Roch Archambault
• Keywords: Analysis, Exact Array Access, ICS 2005, Interprocedural Analysis, Theoretical Computer Science