Re: Register Renaming

Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@aol.com> writes:
>Tim Frink schrieb:
>
>> I'm looking for some references on register renaming (i.e. how it can
>> be implemented in a compiler). I couldn't find any useful references
>> neither on the Internet nor in any papers/books. Do you have a hint for
>> me?
>
>AFAIK "register renaming" is used only inside a CPU. A compiler would
>use e.g. SSA (single static assignment) or graph coloring for register
>(re)allocation instead.


"Register renaming" was used in papers for describing a compiler code
transformation (and I have used it in descriptions of papers in my
bibliography, see
<http://liinwww.ira.uka.de/bibliography/Compiler/anton.ertl.html>).


But yes, I have not seen it used in a compiler context in the last
years; the need to differentiate from hardware register renaming maybe
one factor in this, the rise of SSA form (which does some renaming
itself) another one. Also, in many cases one does not consider the
renamed things registers at the time, but variables, live ranges, or
temporaries; e.g., one compiler register renaming technique is called
"modulo variable expansion" (used in conjunction with modulo
scheduling).


- anton
--
M. Anton Ertl
anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/

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