This program is tentative and subject to change.
Alias analysis is a fundamental compiler analysis that powers numerous optimizations. While research has focused on deriving more precise alias information assuming that the compiler will optimize better, recent work shows a negligible, or even negative, performance impact of alias information. In this work, we shift the perspective from refining to \textit{relaxing} alias information, \emph{i.e.}, removing information, to complement existing work and challenge that assumption systematically. Our study on a state-of-the-art compiler, LLVM, running the SPEC CPU 2017 benchmark suite, shows (1) \emph{a small overall impact}—removing alias analysis entirely has little impact on the final binaries, (2) \emph{few influential queries}—only a small fraction, namely $\sim$3%, of the alias information leads to changes in the final binary, and (3) \emph{lost potential}—random relaxations can reduce execution time by 21% and binary size by 39% for certain cases, suggesting that compilers could better utilize alias information. Through this work, we advocate that it is beneficial for future research to avoid simply refining the general precision of alias analysis, but also to explore how to find and refine the most relevant queries, and how to more effectively utilize alias information.
This program is tentative and subject to change.
Wed 18 JunDisplayed time zone: Seoul change
10:30 - 12:10 | |||
10:30 20mTalk | Partial Evaluation, Whole-Program Compilation PLDI Research Papers DOI Pre-print | ||
10:50 20mTalk | Exploiting Undefined Behavior in C/C++ Programs for Optimization: A Study on the Performance Impact PLDI Research Papers Lucian Popescu INESC-ID; Instituto Superior Técnico - University of Lisbon; Politehnica University of Bucharest, Nuno P. Lopes INESC-ID; Instituto Superior Técnico - University of Lisbon Link to publication DOI | ||
11:10 20mTalk | Relaxing Alias Analysis: Exploring the Unexplored Space PLDI Research Papers DOI | ||
11:30 20mTalk | Webs and Flow-Directed Well-Typedness Preserving Program Transformations PLDI Research Papers Benjamin Quiring University of Maryland, David Van Horn University of Maryland, John Reppy University of Chicago, Olin Shivers Northeastern University DOI | ||
11:50 20mTalk | Slotted E-Graphs: First-Class Support for (Bound) Variables in E-Graphs PLDI Research Papers Rudi Schneider Technische Universität Berlin, Marcus Rossel Barkhausen Institut, Amir Shaikhha University of Edinburgh, Andrés Goens University of Amsterdam, Thomas Koehler CNRS - ICube Lab, Michel Steuwer Technische Universität Berlin DOI Pre-print |