Patent · US Expired

Method and system for improving the locality of memory references during execution of a computer program

US6292934A · kind A · utility

68Cited by
15References
27Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateMay 1, 1997
Grant dateSep 18, 2001
Priority date
Expiry dateMay 1, 2017

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG06F8/4442
  • WIPO fieldComputer technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

The present invention provides a method and system for determining an optimal placement order for basic blocks within a computer program to improve locality of reference and reduce the working set of the computer program. By reducing the working set, the computer program requires less memory than it normally would require to execute on a computer system. The optimal placement order for basic blocks within a computer program reflects the concurrency of usage for basic blocks during execution of the computer program. The method for determining an optimal placement order includes analyzing the computer program to identify all of the basic blocks, determining how many times each basic block is executed, assigning a placement order to each basic block depending upon how many times each basic block was executed, and reordering the basic blocks according to their assigned placement orders to produce an optimized computer program. The method used to identify all of the basic blocks includes disassembling known instruction addresses to identify the beginning and end of basic blocks and processing jump tables to identify more instruction addresses. Processing jump tables includes processing …

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.