Programmer specified pointer independence

Abstract

Good alias analysis is essential in order to achieve high performance on modern processors, yet precise interprocedural analysis does not scale well. We present a source code annotation, #pragma independent, which provides precise pointer aliasing information to the compiler, and describe a tool which highlights the most important and most likely correct locations at which a programmer should insert these annotations. Using this tool we perform a limit study on the effectiveness of pointer independence in improving program performance through improved compilation.