CDTT: Compiler-generated data-triggered threads

Abstract

This paper presents CDTT, a compiler framework that takes C/C++ code and automatically generates a binary that eliminates dynamically redundant code without programmer intervention. It does so by exploiting underlying hardware or software support for the data-triggered threads (DTT) programming and execution model. With the help of idempotence analysis and inter-procedural name dependence analysis, CDTT identifies potential code regions and composes support thread functions that execute as soon as live-in data changes. CDTT can also use profile data to target the elimination of redundant computation. The compiled binary running on top of a software runtime system can achieve nearly the same level of performance as careful hand-coded modifications in most benchmarks. CDTT improves the performance of serial C SPEC benchmarks by as much as 57% (average 11%) on a Nehalem processor.