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  • Non-Deterministic Finite Automation
    • Introduction to Compiler
    • The Structure of a Compiler
    • Intermediate Code Generation
    • Building a Compiler
    • Applications of Compiler
    • Optimizations for Computer Architectures
    • Design of New Computer Architectures
    • Program Translations
    • Software Productivity Tools
    • Programming Language Basics
    • Minimisation of DFAs
    • Explicit Access Control
    • Parameter Passing Mechanisms
    • Introduction to Lexical Analysis
    • Regular expressions
    • Short hands
    • Nondeterministic finite automata
    • Converting a regular expression to an NFA
    • Deterministic finite automata
    • Converting an NFA to a DFA
    • The subset construction
    • Dead states
    • Lexers and lexer generators
    • Splitting the input stream
    • Lexical errors
    • Properties of regular languages
    • Limits to expressive power
    • The Role of the Lexical Analyzer
    • Input Buffering
    • Specification of Tokens
    • Operations on Languages
    • Regular Definitions and Extensions
    • Recognition of Tokens
    • The Lexical-Analyzer Generator Lex
    • Finite Automata
    • Construction of an NFA from a Regular Expression
    • Efficiency of String-Processing Algorithms
    • The Structure of the Generated Analyzer
    • Optimization of DFA-Based Pattern Matchers

  • Basic Parsing Techniques
    • Introduction to Syntax analysis
    • Context-free grammars
    • Writing context free grammars
    • Derivation
    • Syntax trees and ambiguity
    • Operator precedence
    • Writing ambiguous expression grammars
    • Other sources of ambiguity
    • Syntax analysis and Predictive parsing
    • Nullable and FIRST
    • Predictive parsing revisited
    • FOLLOW
    • LL(1) parsing
    • Methods for rewriting grammars for LL(1) parsing
    • SLR parsing
    • Constructions of SLR parse tables
    • Conflicts in SLR parse-tables
    • Using precedence rules in LR parse tables
    • Using LR-parser generators
    • Properties of context-free languages
    • Introduction to Syntax-Directed Translator
    • Evaluating an SDD at the Nodes of a Parse Tree
    • Evaluation Orders for SDD\'s
    • Ordering the Evaluation of Attributes
    • A larger example of calculating FIRST and FOLLOW
    • Syntax Definition
    • Associativity of Operators
    • Parse Trees
    • Ambiguity
    • Syntax-Directed Translation
    • Synthesized Attributes
    • Tree Traversals
    • Parsing
    • Predictive Parsing
    • Use e-Productions
    • Translator for Simple Expressions
    • Semantic Rules with Controlled Side Effects
    • Applications of Syntax-Directed Translation
    • The Structure of a Type of syntax
    • Switch-Statements
    • Syntax-Directed Translation Schemes
    • Postfix Translation Schemes
    • SDT\'s With Actions Inside Productions
    • Eliminating Left Recursion from SDT\'s
    • SDT\'s for L-Attributed Definitions
    • Implementing L-Attributed SDD\'s
    • On-The-Fly Code Generation
    • L-Attributed SDD\'s and LL Parsing
    • Bottom-Up Parsing of L-Attributed SDD\'s

  • Syntax-directed Translation
    • Register Allocation and Assignment
    • Semantic Analysis
    • Introduction to Intermediate Code Generation
    • Variants of Syntax Trees
    • Variants of Syntax Trees
    • The Value-Number Method for Constructing DAG\'s
    • Three-Address Code
    • Quadruples
    • Triples
    • Static Single-Assignment Form
    • Types and Declarations
    • Type Equivalence
    • Sequences of Declarations
    • Translation of Expressions
    • Incremental Translation
    • Addressing Array Elements
    • Translation of Array References
    • Type Checking
    • Type Conversions
    • Overloading of Functions and Operators
    • Type Inference and Polymorphic Functions
    • Algorithm for Unification
    • Control Flow
    • Flow-of-Control Statements
    • Control-Flow Translation of Boolean Expressions
    • Boolean Values and Jumping Code
    • Back patching
    • Backpatching for Boolean Expressions
    • Flow-of-Control Statements
    • Break-, Continue-, and Goto-Statements
    • Introduction to Run-Time Environments
    • Stack Allocation of Space
    • Activation Records
    • Calling Sequences
    • Variable-Length Data on the Stack
    • Access to Nonlocal Data on the Stack
    • Displays
    • Heap Management
    • Locality in Programs
    • Reducing Fragmentation
    • Managing and Coalescing Free Space
    • Manual Deallocation Requests
    • Reachability
    • Introduction to Garbage Collection
    • Reference Counting Garbage Collectors
    • Introduction to Trace-Based Collection
    • Basic Abstraction
    • Optimizing Mark-and-Sweep
    • Mark-and-Compact Garbage Collectors
    • Copying collectors
    • Short-Pause Garbage Collection
    • Incremental Reachability Analysis
    • Partial-Collection Basics
    • The Train Algorithm
    • Parallel and Concurrent Garbage Collection
    • Partial Object Relocation
    • Introduction Code Generation
    • Issues in the Design of a Code Generator
    • Instruction Selection
    • Register Allocation
    • The Target Language
    • Addresses in the Target Code
    • Stack Allocation
    • Run-Time Addresses for Names
    • Basic Blocks and Flow Graphs
    • Basic Blocks
    • Next-Use Information
    • Representation of Flow Graphs
    • Optimization of Basic Blocks
    • Dead Code Elimination
    • Representation of Array References
    • Pointer Assignments and Procedure Calls
    • A Simple Code Generator
    • The Code-Generation Algorithm
    • Design of the Function getReg
    • Peephole Optimization
    • Algebraic Simplification and Reduction in Strength
    • Register Assignment for Outer Loops
    • Instruction Selection by Tree Rewriting
    • Code Generation by Tiling an Input Tree
    • Pattern Matching by Parsing
    • General Tree Matching
    • Optimal Code Generation for Expressions
    • Evaluating Expressions with an Insufficient Supply of Registers
    • Dynamic Programming Code-Generation

  • Data Flow Analysis
    • The Lazy-Code-Motion Algorithm
    • Introduction to Machine-Independent Optimizations
    • The Dynamic Programming Algorithm
    • The Principal Sources of Optimization
    • Semantics-Preserving Transformations
    • Copy Propagation
    • Induction Variables and Reduction in Strength
    • Introduction to Data-Flow Analysis
    • The Data-Flow Analysis Schema
    • Reaching Definitions
    • Live-Variable Analysis
    • Available Expressions
    • Foundations of Data-Flow Analysis
    • Transfer Functions
    • The Iterative Algorithm for General Frameworks
    • Meaning of a Data-Flow Solution
    • Constant Propagation
    • Transfer Functions for the Constant-Propagation Framework
    • Partial-Redundancy Elimination
    • The Lazy-Code-Motion Problem
    • Loops in Flow Graphs
    • Depth-First Ordering
    • Back Edges and Reducibility
    • Natural Loops
    • Speed of Convergence of Iterative Data-Flow Algorithms
    • Region-Based Analysis
    • Necessary Assumptions About Transfer Functions
    • An Algorithm for Region-Based Analysis
    • Handling Non-reducible Flow Graphs
    • Symbolic Analysis
    • Data-Flow Problem Formulation
    • Region-Based Symbolic Analysis

  • Code Generation
    • Introduction to Software Pipelining of Loops
    • Matrix Multiply: An In-Depth Example
    • Software Pipelining of Loops
    • Introduction Instruction-Level Parallelism
    • Multiple Instruction Issue
    • A Basic Machine Model
    • Code-Scheduling Constraints
    • Finding Dependences Among Memory Accesses
    • Phase Ordering Between Register Allocation and Code Scheduling
    • Speculative Execution Support
    • Basic-Block Scheduling
    • List Scheduling of Basic Blocks
    • Global Code Scheduling
    • Upward Code Motion
    • Updating Data Dependences
    • Advanced Code Motion Techniques
    • Software Pipelining
    • Register Allocation and Code Generation
    • A Software-Pipelining Algorithm
    • Scheduling Cyclic Dependence Graphs
    • Improvements to the Pipelining Algorithms
    • Conditional Statements and Hardware Support for Software Pipelining
    • Basic Concepts of Parallelism and Locality
    • Parallelism in Applications
    • Loop-Level Parallelism
    • Introduction to Affine Transform Theory
    • Optimizations
    • Iteration Spaces
    • Affine Array Indexes
    • Controlling the Order of Execution
    • Changing Axes
    • Intermediate Code for Procedures
    • Data Reuse
    • Self Reuse
    • Self-Spatial Reuse
    • Array Data-Dependence Analysis
    • Integer Linear Programming
    • Heuristics for Solving Integer Linear Programs
    • Solving General Integer Linear Programs
    • Finding Synchronization-Free Parallelism
    • Affine Space Partitions
    • Space-Partition Constraints
    • Solving Space-Partition Constraints
    • A Simple Code-Generation Algorithm
    • Eliminating Empty Iterations
    • Synchronization Between Parallel Loops
    • The Parallelization Algorithm and Hierarchical Time
    • Pipelining
    • Solving Time-Partition Constraints by Farkas' Lemma
    • Code Transformations
    • Parallelism With Minimum Synchronization
    • Locality Optimizations
    • Partition Interleaving
    • Putting it All Together
    • Uses of Affine Transforms
    • Interprocedural Analysis
    • Context Sensitivity
    • Cloning-Based Context-Sensitive Analysis
    • Importance of Interprocedural Analysis
    • SQL Injection
    • A Logical Representation of Data Flow
    • Execution of Datalog Programs
    • Problematic Datalog Rules
    • A Simple Pointer-Analysis Algorithm
    • Flow Insensitivity
    • Context-Insensitive Interprocedural Analysis
    • Context-Sensitive Pointer Analysis
    • Adding Context to Datalog Rules
    • Datalog Implementation by BDD's
    • Relational Operations as BDD Operations

Branch : Computer Science and Engineering
Subject : Compiler design
Unit : Syntax-directed Translation

Reference Counting Garbage Collectors


Introduction: We now consider a simple, although imperfect, garbage collector, based on reference counting, which identifies garbage as an object changes from being reachable to unreachable; the object can be deleted when its count drops to zero. With a reference-counting garbage collector, every object must have a field for the reference count. Reference counts can be maintained as follows:

1.  Object Allocation. The reference count of the new object is set to 1.

2.  Parameter Passing. The reference count of each object passed into a procedure is incremented.

3.  Reference Assignments. For statement u = v, where u and v are references, the reference count of the object referred to by v goes up by one, and the count for the old object referred to by u goes down by one.

4. Procedure Returns. As a procedure exits, all the references held by the local variables of that procedure activation record must also be decremented. If several local variables hold references to the same object, that object's count must be decremented once for each such reference.

5.  Transitive Loss of Reachability. Whenever the reference count of an object becomes zero, we must also decrement the count of each object pointed to by a reference within the object.

Reference counting has two main disadvantages: it cannot collect unreachable, cyclic data structures, and it is expensive. Cyclic data structures are quite plausible; data structures often point back to their parent nodes, or point to each other as cross references.

 

Example:Figure 7.18 shows three objects with references among them, but no references from anywhere else. If none of these objects is part of the root set, then they are all garbage, but their reference counts are each greater than 0. Such a situation is tantamount to a memory leak if we use reference counting for garbage collection, since then this garbage and any structures like it are never deallocated.

The overhead of reference counting is high because additional operations are introduced with each reference assignment, and at procedure entries and exits. This overhead is proportional to the amount of computation in the program, and not just to the number of objects in the system. Of particular concern are the updates made to references in the root set of a program. The concept of deferred reference counting has been proposed as a means to eliminate the overhead associated with updating the reference counts due to local stack accesses. That is, reference counts do not include references from the root set of the program. An object is not considered to be garbage until the entire root set is scanned and no references to the object are found.

The advantage of reference counting, on the other hand, is that garbage collection is performed in an incremental fashion. Even though the total overhead can be large, the operations are spread throughout the mutator's computation.

 

Although removing one reference may render a large number of objects unreachable, the operation of recursively modifying reference counts can easily be deferred and performed piecemeal across time. Thus, reference counting is particularly attractive algorithm when timing deadlines must be met, as well as for interactive applications where long, sudden pauses are unacceptable. Another advantage is that garbage is collected immediately, keeping space usage low.

 

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