Optimizing local memory allocation and assignment through a decoupled approach

Abstract

Software-controlled local memories (LMs) are widely used to provide fast, scalable, power efficient and predictable access to critical data. While many studies addressed LM management, keeping hot data in the LM continues to cause major headache. This paper revisits LM management of arrays in light of recent progresses in register allocation, supporting multiple live-range splitting schemes through a generic integer linear program. These schemes differ in the grain of decision points. The model can also be extended to address fragmentation, assigning live ranges to precise offsets. We show that the links between LM management and register allocation have been underexploited, leaving much fundamental questions open and effective applications to be explored. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.