A SUIF Interface to Alias Analysis Results

While prior work has proposed a number of algorithms for computing aliases in C programs[5][6][7], there has been relatively little evaluation of these algorithms[1]. This paper proposes an interface that gives standard dataflow analysis and visualization clients access to “may alias” and “must alias” results produced by multiple alias analysis implementations. The clients can use this abstract interface without knowing about the implementation or representation of any particular alias analysis. This interface will provide a solid base for future experimentation with various precision alias analyses across a number of scalar analyses. In addition, we believe that it will provide a springboard for more parallelism enhancing optimizations in C programs. We present a detailed example of an alias analysis client to give the reader a flavor for using the interface. We expect that this interface will make it easy for SUIF compiler writers to use analysis results for their own applications. This paper can be seen as a users guide for incorporating alias analysis results into other analyses. The interface is still a work in progress and, while the current implementations of it should enhance standard scalar analysis, we expect to extend the interface to support more advanced analyses. As a proof of concept, we present some of the clients that we have already implemented as well as the applications that we are building.