Compilation techniques for short-vector instructions

Multimedia extensions are nearly ubiquitous in today's general-purpose processors. These extensions consist primarily of a set of short-vector instructions that apply the same opcode to a vector of operands. This design introduces a data-parallel component to processors that exploit instruction-level parallelism, and presents an opportunity for increased performance. In fact, ignoring a processor's vector opcodes can leave a significant portion of the available resources unused. In order for software developers to find short-vector instructions generally useful, the compiler must target these extensions with complete transparency and consistent performance. This thesis develops compiler techniques to target short-vector instructions automatically and efficiently. One important aspect of compilation is the effective management of memory alignment. As with scalar loads and stores, vector references are typically more efficient when accessing aligned regions. In many cases, the compiler can glean no alignment information and must emit conservative code sequences. In response, I introduce a range of compiler techniques for detecting and enforcing aligned references. In my benchmark suite, the most practical method ensures alignment for roughly 75% of dynamic memory references.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Larsen, Samuel (Samuel Barton), 1975-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Saman P. Amarasinghe.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/37890

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/37890