Re: Optimizing in assembly language

Tom Payne <thp@hill.cs.ucr.edu>
12 Mar 2001 02:37:04 -0500

          From comp.compilers

Related articles
[4 earlier articles]
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)
Re: Optimizing in assembly language Eric.Boon@ICT.nl (Eric Boon) (2001-03-22)
Re: Optimizing in assembly language uabbwat@uab.ericsson.se (Barry Watson) (2001-03-26)
Re: Optimizing in assembly language Martin.Ward@durham.ac.uk (2001-03-26)
[3 later articles]
| List of all articles for this month |

From: Tom Payne <thp@hill.cs.ucr.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: 12 Mar 2001 02:37:04 -0500
Organization: University of California, Riverside
References: 01-03-006
Keywords: optimize
Posted-Date: 12 Mar 2001 02:37:04 EST

Randall Hyde <rhyde@transdimension.com> wrote:
[...]
: Clearly, given the necessary resources (time, skill, etc.), an expert
: assembly program *can* beat a compiler for a given *instance* of the
: program.


It's not clear to me. For a finite machine, given sufficient
resources, a programmer and a compiler could each find an optimum
(i.e., unbeatable) "instance" of the program.


: 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.
: Sure, optimization is a bit more difficult at this level and you'd
: have to allow the programmer to disable the optimizations on a
: statement by statement basis (since sometimes the programmer really
: does know better).


AFIK, all low-level language translators (attempt to) decompile
decompile programs in their source language into some sort of
intermediate code that can be optimized and code-generated into the
target language. AFIK, such systems don't handle self-modifying code
and tend to have problems with indirect jumps.


Tom Payne


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