A Note on Exhaustive State Space Search for Efficient Code Generation

TL;DR

This paper discusses using exhaustive state space search during compiler development to identify optimal instruction sequences for data manipulations, which are then hard-wired into the code generator for efficiency.

Contribution

It introduces a method for exhaustive search of instruction sequences during compiler development to optimize code generation.

Findings

Exhaustive search finds the best instruction sequences.

Hard-wiring sequences improves runtime efficiency.

Search is feasible since it occurs only during development.

Abstract

This note explores state space search to find efficient instruction sequences that perform particular data manipulations. Once found, the instruction sequences are hard-wired in the code generator that needs these data manipulations. Since state space is only searched while developing the compiler, search time is not at a premium, which allows exhaustively searching for the best possible instruction sequences.