[LLVMdev] Google Summer of Code Idea

[Richard Warburton]

>  Ok.  I think the most important thing to keep in mind, if you want
>  this to be useful for LLVM, is for it to be sound in the presence of
>  incomplete programs.  I think it would be very interesting to have a
>  BDD based analysis in LLVM, it would be useful for performance
>  comparisons and many other things, even if it isn't turned on by
>  default.  However, it must be sound.

Both of my suggested algorithms have been implemented in Java - which,
by virtue of reflection, means one cannot statically determine which
class certain object are referring to.  In this instance I believe
they simply assume the most conservative case (ie mayuse/maydef at
that point could be anything).  I suspect that this approach could be
equally applied to an unknown library.

>  Also, LLVM benefits quite a bit from mod/ref info for function.  I
>  don't know if you've thought about it at all, but it is an important
>  problem.  If you're interested, my thesis describes these issues in
>  detail.

I'll peruse this, are there any other relevant, LLVM specific texts
that are appropriate for this, and not linked from the documentation
page[0] ?

>  > 1. Is this too ambitious for a google summer of code project?
>
>  It depends on your familiarity with the domain.  If you haven't worked
>  in the area of alias analysis (and applications) it probably is.
>  There are lot of smaller subprojects that would be useful for llvm
>  though.

In order that I may be to gauge what options there are, can you
suggest some examples of these subprojects.

regards,

  Richard Warburton

[0] http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/docs/