Nonio - modular automatic compiler phase selection and ordering specialization framework for modern compilers

• Type: Article in International Scientific Journal
• Date: 2019

Authors

Nobre, R (Author) Other; João Bispo (Author) FEUP; Carvalho, T (Author) Other; João M. P. Cardoso (Author) FEUP

Journal

Title: SoftwareX

Vol. 10

Publisher: Elsevier

Indexing

ISI Web of Knowledge - 2 Citations

Scopus - 3 Citations

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-00Q-JTN

DOI: 10.1016/j.softx.2019.100238

Abstract (EN): This article presents Nonio, a modular, easy-to-use, design space exploration framework focused on exploring custom combinations of compiler flags and compiler sequences. We describe the framework and discuss its use with two of the most popular compiler toolchains, GCC and Clang+LLVM. Particularly, we discuss implementation details in the context of flag selection, when using GCC, and phase selection and ordering, when using Clang+LLVM. The framework software organization allows to easily add new components as plug-ins (e.g., an exploration algorithm, an objective metric, integration with another compiler toolchain). The software architecture provides well-defined interfaces, in order to enable seamless composition and interaction between different components. We present, as an example, a use case where we rely on Nonio to obtain custom compiler flags for reducing the execution time and the energy consumption of a C program, in relation to the best predetermined optimization settings provided by the compiler (e.g., -O3). (C) 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

No. of pages: 6