[gclist] Re: gclist-digest V1 #102

[Hans Boehm]

> I'm looking for information on compiler techniques to do lifetime
> analysis of allocated objects, with a view to replacing calls to a
> general allocator with faster allocation techniques where possible.
>

In addition to the work by Tofte and Talpin, there has been a lot of other work
in this area.  In particular, much of the work on pointer-aliasing seems
directly relevant.  They all compute static approximations to run-time data
structures.  The first session of POPL 96 is probably a good starting point,
though some of the older work is cited only transitively.  The PLDI 94 paper by
Alain Deutsch contains a good comparison of techniques up to that point.

In spite of having once supervised Lucy Hederman's thesis (there's still code
in the Russell compiler to do something along these lines), I no longer have a
good overview of all the available techniques.  In particular, I'm not sure how
the pointer-aliasing work compares to Tofte and Talpin.  They ostensibly answer
different questions.  But I think that difference is superficial, and it does
make sense to ask how they compare in precision and analysis time.

Hans

-- 
Hans-Juergen Boehm
boehm@mti.sgi.com