{"id":150235,"date":"2001-01-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2001-01-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/msr-research-item\/estimating-the-impact-of-scalable-pointer-analysis-on-optimization\/"},"modified":"2018-10-16T21:30:32","modified_gmt":"2018-10-17T04:30:32","slug":"estimating-the-impact-of-scalable-pointer-analysis-on-optimization","status":"publish","type":"msr-research-item","link":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/publication\/estimating-the-impact-of-scalable-pointer-analysis-on-optimization\/","title":{"rendered":"Estimating the Impact of Scalable Pointer Analysis on Optimization"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"asset-content\">\n<p>This paper addresses the following question: Do scalable control-flow-insensitive pointer analyses provide the level of precision required to make them useful in compiler optimizations? We first describe alias frequency, a metric that measures the ability of a pointer analysis to determine that pairs of memory accesses in C programs cannot be aliases. We believe that this kind of information is useful for a variety of optimizations, while remaining independent of a particular optimization. We show that control-flow and context insensitive analyses provide the same answer as the best possible pointer analysis on at least 95% of all statically generated alias queries. In order to understand the potential run-time impact of the remaining 5% queries, we weight the alias queries by dynamic execution counts obtained from profile data. Flow-insensitive pointer analyses are accurate on at least 95% of the weighted alias queries as well. We then examine whether scalable pointer analyses are inaccurate on the remaining 5% alias queries because they are context-insensitive. To this end, we have developed a new context-sensitive pointer analysis that also serves as a general engine for tracing the flow of values in C programs. To our knowledge, it is the first technique for performing context-sensitive analysis with subtyping that scales to millions of lines of code. We find that the new algorithm does not identify fewer aliases than the context-insensitive analysis.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- .asset-content --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This paper addresses the following question: Do scalable control-flow-insensitive pointer analyses provide the level of precision required to make them useful in compiler optimizations? We first describe alias frequency, a metric that measures the ability of a pointer analysis to determine that pairs of memory accesses in C programs cannot be aliases. We believe that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"user_nicename","value":"maf"}],"msr_publishername":"","msr_publisher_other":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_edition":"","msr_editors":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_issue":"","msr_journal":"","msr_number":"MSR-TR-2001-20","msr_organization":"","msr_pages_string":"19","msr_page_range_start":"19","msr_page_range_end":"","msr_series":"","msr_volume":"","msr_copyright":"","msr_conference_name":"","msr_doi":"","msr_arxiv_id":"","msr_s2_paper_id":"","msr_mag_id":"","msr_pubmed_id":"","msr_other_authors":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_award":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_institution":"Microsoft Research","msr_host":"","msr_version":"","msr_duration":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_s2_match_type":"","msr_citation_count_updated":"","msr_published_date":"2001-01-01","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_notes":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_conference_url":"","msr_journal_url":"","msr_s2_pdf_url":"","msr_year":2001,"msr_citation_count":0,"msr_influential_citations":0,"msr_reference_count":0,"msr_s2_match_confidence":0,"msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":true,"msr_s2_open_access":false,"msr_s2_author_ids":[],"msr_pub_ids":[],"msr_hide_image_in_river":0,"footnotes":""},"msr-research-highlight":[],"research-area":[13560],"msr-publication-type":[193718],"msr-publisher":[],"msr-focus-area":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-field-of-study":[],"msr-conference":[],"msr-journal":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-150235","msr-research-item","type-msr-research-item","status-publish","hentry","msr-research-area-programming-languages-software-engineering","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_publishername":"","msr_edition":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_published_date":"2001-01-01","msr_host":"","msr_duration":"","msr_version":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_pages_string":"19","msr_chapter":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_journal":"","msr_volume":"","msr_number":"MSR-TR-2001-20","msr_editors":"","msr_series":"","msr_issue":"","msr_organization":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_notes":"","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":1,"msr_main_download":"225358","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_doi":"","msr_publication_uploader":[{"type":"file","title":"tr-2001-20.pdf","viewUrl":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2001\/01\/tr-2001-20.pdf","id":225358,"label_id":0}],"msr_related_uploader":"","msr_citation_count":0,"msr_citation_count_updated":"","msr_s2_paper_id":"","msr_influential_citations":0,"msr_reference_count":0,"msr_arxiv_id":"","msr_s2_author_ids":[],"msr_s2_open_access":false,"msr_s2_pdf_url":null,"msr_attachments":[{"id":225358,"url":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2001\/01\/tr-2001-20.pdf"}],"msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"user_nicename","value":"maf","user_id":32771,"rest_url":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=maf"}],"msr_impact_theme":[],"msr_research_lab":[199565],"msr_event":[],"msr_group":[],"msr_project":[],"publication":[],"video":[],"msr-tool":[],"msr_publication_type":"techreport","related_content":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/150235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/msr-research-item"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/150235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":536489,"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/150235\/revisions\/536489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"msr-research-highlight","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-highlight?post=150235"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=150235"},{"taxonomy":"msr-publication-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-publication-type?post=150235"},{"taxonomy":"msr-publisher","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-publisher?post=150235"},{"taxonomy":"msr-focus-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-focus-area?post=150235"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=150235"},{"taxonomy":"msr-post-option","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-post-option?post=150235"},{"taxonomy":"msr-field-of-study","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-field-of-study?post=150235"},{"taxonomy":"msr-conference","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-conference?post=150235"},{"taxonomy":"msr-journal","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-journal?post=150235"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=150235"},{"taxonomy":"msr-pillar","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-pillar?post=150235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}