First IEEE International Workshop on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation
An Object Level Transformation Technique to Improve the Performance of Embedded Applications
Florence, Italy
November 10-December 10
ISBN: 0-7695-1387-5
Embedded system designers tend to use small and simple cache memories. This kind of caches can experience poor performance because of their not flexible placement policy. In this scenario, a big fraction of the misses can originate from the mismatch between the cache behavior and the memory accesses' locality features. A way to increase the performance is to modify the program layout to fit the cache structure. This strategy needs the solution of a N-P complete problem and very long processing time to determine the optimum layout. We propose an object level transformation technique to look for a program layout that minimizes the number of misses by means of smart heuristics. The solution transforms the program layout using the standard functionalities of a linker. Using some standard benchmarks and several embedded applications, we show the benefits of transforming program layout on various cache configurations.
Index Terms:
program transformation, procedure reordering, cache, optimization, conflict misses
Citation:
Sandro Bartolini, Cosimo Antonio Prete, "An Object Level Transformation Technique to Improve the Performance of Embedded Applications," scam, pp.0026, First IEEE International Workshop on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, 2001