Making the Compilation “Pipeline” Explicit: Dynamic Compilation Using Trace Tree Serialization

Trace-based compilers operate by dynamically discovering loop headers and then recording and compiling all paths through a loop that are executed with sufficient frequency. The different paths through each loop form a tree, with the loop header at the root, in which common code is shared up-stream. Such trace-trees can be serialized in a specific manner that allows us to organize the compiler pipeline as a series of filters. We have implemented such a compiler pipeline that has completely linear runtime behavior. Further, it has only two write barriers, meaning that substantial parts of the compilation effort could potentially be parallelized on future multi-core platforms.