Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Using Types To Analyze And Optimize Object-Oriented Programs, Amer Diwan, Kathryn S. Mckinley, J. Eliot B. Moss

Computer Science Department Faculty Publication Series

Object-oriented programming languages provide many software engineering benefits, but these often come at a performance cost. Object-oriented programs make extensive use of method in- vocations and pointer dereferences, both of which are potentially costly on modern machines. We show how to use types to produce effective, yet simple, techniques that reduce the costs of these features in Modula-3, a statically typed, object-oriented language. Our compiler performs type-based alias analysis to disambiguate memory references. It uses the results of the type-based alias analysis to eliminate redundant memory references and to replace monomorphic method in- vocation sites with direct calls. Using limit, …