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This paper describes and evaluates the feedback directed optimizations that are used in the Compaq C compiler tool chain for Alpha. The optimizations include superblock formation, inlining, commando loop optimization, register allocation, code layout, and switch statement optimization. The optimizations either are extensions of classical optimizations or are restructuring transformations that enable classical optimizations. Feedback directed optimization is highly effective, achieving a 17% speedup over aggressive classical optimization. Inlining contributes the most performance and code layout, superblock formation, and loop restructuring are also important. 1 Introduction When tuning programs, we often notice that the compiler has made poor optimization decisions. Compilers can only use the information they are given, and we usually know much more about a program than what is expressed in the source code. One important piece of information is the execution behavior of a program. How...

This paper describes and evaluates the profile-based optimizations in the Compaq C compiler tool chain for Alpha. The optimizations include superblock formation, inlining, commando loop optimization, register allocation, code layout, and switch statement optimization. The optimizations either are extensions of classical optimizations or are restructuring transformations that enable classical optimizations. Profile-based optimization is highly effective, achieving a 17% speedup over aggressive classical optimization on the SPECInt95 benchmarks. Inlining contributes the most performance and code layout, superblock formation, and loop restructuring are also important. 1. Introduction When tuning programs, we often notice that the compiler has made poor optimization decisions. Compilers can only use the information they are given, and we usually know much more about a program than is expressed in the source code. One important piece of information is the execution behavior of a pr...

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interests include computer-mediated communication, online communities, architecture and design for online spaces, social networks, computational linguistics, and media studies. ABSTRACT: Very large-scale conversation (VLSC) involves the exchange of thousands of electronic mail (e-mail) messages among hundreds or thousands of people. Usenet newsgroups are good examples (but not the only examples) of online sites where VLSCs take place. To facilitate understanding of the social and semantic structure of VLSCs, two tools from the social sciences—social networks and semantic networks—have been extended for the purposes of interface design. As interface devices, social and semantic networks need to be flexible, layered representations that are useful as a means for summarizing, exploring, and cross-indexing the large volumes of messages that constitute the archives of VLSCs. This paper discusses the design criteria necessary for transforming these social scientific representations into interface devices. The discussion is illustrated with the description of the Conversation Map system, an implemented system for browsing and navigating VLSCs.

Imagine if you will a most peculiar game of bowling. One contestant is the sole bowler; the others are all human bowling pins. And instead of an array of pins in the centre of the “alley”, just one human pin at a time is set up in the “gutter ” where the bowler cannot fail to knock it down. And so he does, on and on, with evident relish in his underpinned mastery. Such a game seems to me a not altogether unfitting metaphor for H.G. Widdowson’s (2004) latest and largest – and, one ardently hopes, last – assault on “(Critical) Discourse Analysis”. Some of the targets are familiar from his “past ten years ” (page x) of fulminations, which he esteemed highly enough to have collected in a special volume, Controversies in Applied Linguistics (Seidlhofer [ed.], 2003); and he frankly calls the new book “confrontational and uncompromising ” (“waspish ” would have been my word). Indeed it is; yet he does not seem deterred by the prospect that such a stance just might affect his own “rationality ” and “logical consistency ” (see below). The Preface demurely trivialises his verbal sallies of aggression, which he

Comments welcome. This paper investigates the determinants and consequences of the corporate cash holdings. We use firm-level data of 4,515 firms in Canada, France, Germany, Great-Britain and the USA over the period 1989-2002. We show that financial factors, as well as institutional factors, influence the corporate cash holdings determinants. Moreover, implementing a dynamic panel data estimation, we find empirical support for the hypothesis of implicit cash targets. The second key point of the paper is to investigate the consequences of “excessive ” cash holdings. To do so, we implement a bivariate probit model to take into account the fact that cash balances levels and the future performance of these firms are probably jointly determined. We conclude that excessive cash holdings lead to poor firm performances.

Toward an evolutionary linguistic theory

Under the supervision of Dr. Ramon Ribé i Queralt, director of the

The demographic evidence of gender bias in many countries has provided an impetus for finding ways to study the status of women in developing countries. Because of the lack of accurate intra-household data, Deaton (1989) introduced a method for using household expenditure data to infer discrimination in the allocation of goods between boys and girls. Few studies of discrimination using the method, however, have detected bias even though alternative indicators suggest it is a serious problem. In this paper, we study the case of Papua New Guinea, a country in which there are many indicators of severe gender bias. Discrimination in the allocation of goods between boys and girls within households in Papua New Guinea is examined using Deaton’s outlay-equivalent ratio method. Adding a boy to the household reduces expenditure on adult goods by as much as would a nine-tenths reduction in total outlay per member, but girls have no effect on adult goods expenditure. The hypothesis of Haddad and Reardon (1993) that gender bias is inversely related to the importance of female labour in agricultural production is not supported. Sensitivity analysis shows that bias in rural areas occurs equally regardless of the age of the household head, while bias against girls may be less in regions of the country that have ethnic groups which practice matrilineal descent.