Improving mobile program performance through the use of a hybrid intermediate representation

ABSTRACT

We present a novel transfer format for mobile programs that is a hybrid of two existing formats: bytecode and SafeTSA. Java bytecode offers a compact representation and ease of interpretation (fast-compilation); SafeTSA offers amenability to optimization. We use program profiling to guide format selection at the method-level. Methods deemed "hot" are those for which optimization should be expended and as such, are encoded using the SafeTSA format. All other methods are encoded using bytecode. Our hybrid format exploits the benefits of each constituent format to reduce compilation, execution, and transfer overhead.

REFERENCES

• 1: Ali-Reza Adl-Tabatabai , Michał Cierniak , Guei-Yuan Lueh , Vishesh M. Parikh , James M. Stichnoth, Fast, effective code generation in a just-in-time Java compiler, Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN 1998 conference on Programming language design and implementation, p.280-290, June 17-19, 1998, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
• 2: B. Alpern , C. R. Attanasio , J. J. Barton , M. G. Burke , P. Cheng , J.-D. Choi , A. Cocchi , S. J. Fink , D. Grove , M. Hind , S. F. Hummel , D. Lieber , V. Litvinov , M. F. Mergen , T. Ngo , J. R. Russell , V. Sarkar , M. J. Serrano , J. C. Shepherd , S. E. Smith , V. C. Sreedhar , H. Srinivasan , J. Whaley, The Jalapeño virtual machine, IBM Systems Journal, v.39 n.1, p.211-238, January 2000
• 3: Wolfram Amme , Niall Dalton , Jeffery von Ronne , Michael Franz, SafeTSA: a type safe and referentially secure mobile-code representation based on static single assignment form, Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN 2001 conference on Programming language design and implementation, p.137-147, June 2001, Snowbird, Utah, United States
• 4: W. Amme, J. von Ronne, and M. Franz. Using the safetsa representation to boost the performance of an existing java virtual machine. Technical Report UC Irvine 06/02, University of California, Irvine, 2002.
• 5: Matthew Arnold , Stephen Fink , David Grove , Michael Hind , Peter F. Sweeney, Adaptive optimization in the Jalapeño JVM, Proceedings of the 15th ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications, p.47-65, October 2000, Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States
• 6: J. Choi, R. Cytron, and J. Ferrante. Automatic Construction of Sparse Data Flow Evaluation Graphs. pages 55--66, January 1991.
• 7: Michał Cierniak , Guei-Yuan Lueh , James M. Stichnoth, Practicing JUDO: Java under dynamic optimizations, Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN 2000 conference on Programming language design and implementation, p.13-26, June 18-21, 2000, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
• 8: ECMA standardization of the Common Language Infrastructure. http: //msdn.microsoft.com/net/ecma/.
• 9: Ron Cytron , Jeanne Ferrante , Barry K. Rosen , Mark N. Wegman , F. Kenneth Zadeck, Efficiently computing static single assignment form and the control dependence graph, ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS), v.13 n.4, p.451-490, Oct. 1991 [doi>10.1145/115372.115320]
• 10: Personal communcation with Michael Franz, author of {3}. http://www.ics.uci.edu/~franz/.
• 11: B. Grant, M. Mock, M. Philipose, C. Chambers, and S. Eggers. Dyc: An expressive annotation-directed dynamic compiler for c. Technical Report Tech Report UW-CSE-97-03-03. University of Washington, 2000.
• 12: The Java Hotspot performance engine architecture.
• 13: Microsoft Inc. Microsoft Explorer. http://www.microsoft.com/net/.
• 14: Chandra Krintz , Brad Calder, Using annotations to reduce dynamic optimization time, Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN 2001 conference on Programming language design and implementation, p.156-167, June 2001, Snowbird, Utah, United States
• 15: C. Krintz, D. Grove, V. Sarkar, and B. Calder. Reducing the Overhead of Dynamic Compilation. Software---Practice and Experience. 31(8):717--738,2001.
• 16: Tim Lindholm , Frank Yellin, Java Virtual Machine Specification, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 1999
• 17: Michael P. Plezbert , Ron K. Cytron, Does “just in time” = “better late than never”?, Proceedings of the 24th ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages, p.120-131, January 15-17, 1997, Paris, France [doi>10.1145/263699.263713]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.4 Processors
          Subjects: Code generation

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.2 Language Classifications

          Nouns: Java
      D.3.4 Processors
          Subjects: Optimization

General Terms:
Algorithms, Documentation, Theory