Re: Optimizing in assembly language

A Johnstone <adrian@sartre.cs.rhbnc.ac.uk>
8 Mar 2001 13:17:17 -0500

          From comp.compilers

Related articles
Optimizing in assembly language rhyde@transdimension.com (Randall Hyde) (2001-03-01)
Re: Optimizing in assembly language jim.granville@designtools.co.nz (Jim Granville) (2001-03-04)
Re: Optimizing in assembly language sunni@speakeasy.net (Shankar Unni) (2001-03-04)
Re: Optimizing in assembly language ts3@ukc.ac.uk (T.Shackell) (2001-03-08)
Re: Optimizing in assembly language jguthrie@brokersys.com (Jonathan Guthrie) (2001-03-08)
Re: Optimizing in assembly language l-desnogues@ti.com (Laurent Desnogues) (2001-03-08)
Re: Optimizing in assembly language ceco@jupiter.com (Tzvetan Mikov) (2001-03-08)
Re: Optimizing in assembly language adrian@sartre.cs.rhbnc.ac.uk (A Johnstone) (2001-03-08)
Re: Optimizing in assembly language rhyde@transdimension.com (Randall Hyde) (2001-03-10)
Re: Optimizing in assembly language me@nospam.net (Scottie) (2001-03-10)
Re: Optimizing in assembly language thp@hill.cs.ucr.edu (Tom Payne) (2001-03-12)
Re: Optimizing in assembly language rhyde@transdimension.com (Randall Hyde) (2001-03-14)
Re: Optimizing in assembly language bonzini@gnu.org (2001-03-22)
Re: Optimizing in assembly language thp@hill.cs.ucr.edu (Tom Payne) (2001-03-22)
[6 later articles]
| List of all articles for this month |

From: A Johnstone <adrian@sartre.cs.rhbnc.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: 8 Mar 2001 13:17:17 -0500
Organization: Royal Holloway, University of London
References: 01-03-006 01-03-046
Keywords: assembler, optimize
Posted-Date: 08 Mar 2001 13:17:17 EST

:> So here's my question: why can't we write an "optimizing assembler"
:> that lets the programmer specify machine sequences and the assembler
:> does the same kinds of "book keeping" that a HLL compiler would do.


Slightly off topic, but a year or two ago we wrote some reverse
assembly tools for a DSP
(http://www.cs.rhul.ac.uk/research/languages). One of the side effects
of this work was an exhastive dataflow analysis of the human-written
assembler source, and this identified all registers that were in use
in a function, and more importantly all registers which were live
across the sum of all function calls for a particular function. This
allowed register mis-use to be easily identified.


I haven't written assembler in real anger for a few years, but a tool
like that would have saved many programmer days of effort. I wonder
why assemblers don't come with good dataflow analysis tools?


                                                              Adrian


--
Dr Adrian Johnstone, Senior Lecturer in Computing, Computer Science Dep,
Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey, TW20 0EX, England.
Email a.johnstone@rhul.ac.uk Tel:+44(0)1784 443425 Fax:+44(0)1784 439786


Post a followup to this message

Return to the comp.compilers page.
Search the comp.compilers archives again.