Performance enhancement of embedded software based on new register allocation technique

In this paper, a register allocation technique that translates memory accesses to register accesses is presented to enhance embedded software performance. In the proposed method, a source code is profiled to generate a memory trace. From the profiling results, target functions with high dynamic call counts are selected, and the proposed register allocation technique is applied only to the target functions to save the compilation time. The memory trace of the target functions is searched for the memory accesses that result in cycle count reduction when replaced by register accesses, and they are translated to register accesses by modifying the intermediate code and allocating promotion registers. The experiments on MediaBench and DSPstone benchmark programs show that the proposed method increases the performance by 14 and 18% on the average for ARM and MCORE, respectively. q 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.