We describe a new compiler for Standard ML called TIL, that is based on four technologies: intensional polymorphism, tag-free garbage collection, conventional functional language optimization, and loop optimization. We use intensional polymorphism and tag-free garbage collection to provide specialized representations, even though SML is a polymorphic language. We use conventional functional language optimization to reduce the cost of intensional polymorphism, and loop optimization to generate good code for recursive functions. We present an example of TIL compiling an SML function to machine code, and compare the performance of TIL code against that of a widely used compiler, Standard ML of New Jersey.

Much research has been devoted to studies of and algorithms for memory management based on garbage collection or explicit allocation and deallocation. An alternative approach, region-based memory management, has been known for decades, but has not been wellstudied. In a region-based system each allocation specifies a region, and memory is reclaimed by destroying a region, freeing all the storage allocated therein. We show that on a suite of allocation-intensive C programs, regions are competitive with malloc/free and sometimes substantially faster. We also show that regions support safe memory management with low overhead. Experience with our benchmarks suggests that modifying many existing programs to use regions is not difficult. 1 Introduction The two most popular memory management techniques are explicit allocation and deallocation, as in C's malloc/free, and various forms of garbagecollection [Wil92]. Both have well-known advantages and disadvantages, discussed further below. A t...

The Marmot system is a research platform for studying the implementation of high level programming languages. It currently comprises an optimizing native-code compiler, runtime system, and libraries for a large subset of Java. Marmot integrates well-known representation, optimization, code generation, and runtime techniques with a few Java-specific features to achieve competitive performance. This paper contains a description of the Marmot system design, along with highlights of our experience applying and adapting traditional implementation techniques to Java. A detailed performance evaluation assesses both Marmot's overall performance relative to other Java and C++ implementations and the relative costs of various Java language features in Marmot-compiled code. Our experience with Marmot has demonstrated that well-known compilation techniques can produce very good performance for static Java applications---comparable or superior to other Java systems, and approaching that o...

Statically typed languages with Hindley-Milner polymorphism have long been compiled using inefficient and fully boxed data representations. Recently, several new compilation methods have been proposed to support more efficient and unboxed multi-word representations. Unfortunately, none of these techniques is fully satisfactory. For example, Leroy's coercion-based approach does not handle recursive data types and mutable types well. The type-passing approach (proposed by Harper and Morrisett) handles all data objects, but it involves extensive runtime type analysis and code manipulations. This paper presents a new flexible representation analysis technique that combines the best of both approaches. Our new scheme supports unboxed representations for recursive and mutable types, yet it only requires little runtime type analysis. In fact, we show that there is a continuum of possibilities between the coercion-based approach and the type-passing approach. By varying the amount of boxing an...

We describe a system that supports source-level integration of ML-like functional language code with ANSI C or Ada83 code. The system works by translating the functional code into type-correct, "vanilla" C or Ada; it offers simple, efficient, type-safe inter-operation between new functional code components and "legacy" third-generationlanguage components. Our translator represents a novel synthesis of techniques including user-parameterized specification of primitive types and operators; removal of polymorphism by code specialization; removal of higher-order functions using closure datatypes and interpretation; and aggressive optimization of the resulting first-order code, which can be viewed as encoding the result of a closure analysis. Programs remain fully typed at every stage of the translation process, using only simple, standard type systems. Target code runs at speeds comparable to the output of current optimizing ML compilers, even though handicapped by a conservative garbage collector.

Recent advances in compiler technology have demonstrated the benefits of using strongly typed intermediate languages to compile richly typed source languages (e.g., ML). A typepreserving compiler can use types to guide advanced optimizations and to help generate provably secure mobile code. Types, unfortunately, are very hard to represent and manipulate efficiently; a naive implementation can easily add exponential overhead to the compilation and execution of a program. This paper describes our experience with implementing the FLINT typed intermediate language in the SML/NJ production compiler. We observe that a type-preserving compiler will not scale to handle large types unless all of its type-preserving stages preserve the asymptotic time and space usage in representing and manipulating types. We present a series of novel techniques for achieving this property and give empirical evidence of their effectiveness.

Compilers for polymorphic languages can use runtime type inspection to support advanced implementation techniques such as tagless garbage collection, polymorphic marshalling, and flattened data structures. Intensional type analysis is a type-theoretic framework for expressing and certifying such type-analyzing computations. Unfortunately, existing approaches to intensional analysis do not work well on types with universal, existential, or fixpoint quantifiers. This makes it impossible to code applications such as garbage collection, persistence, or marshalling which must be able to examine the type of any runtime value. We present a typed intermediate language that supports fully reflexive intensional type analysis. By fully reflexive, we mean that type-analyzing operations are applicable to the type of any runtime value in the language. In particular, we provide both type-level and term-level constructs for analyzing quantified types. Our system supports structural induction on quant...

We define an interpretation of Standard ML into type theory. The interpretation takes the form of a set of elaboration rules reminiscent of the static semantics given in The Definition of StandardML. In particular, the elaboration rules are given in a relational style, exploiting indeterminacy to avoid over-commitment to specific implementation techniques. Elaboration consists of identifier scope resolution, type checking and type inference, expansion of derived forms, pattern compilation, overloading resolution, equality compilation, and the coercive aspects of signature matching.

A certifying compiler takes a source language program and produces object code, as well as a "certificate" that can be used to verify that the object code satisfies desirable properties, such as type safety and memory safety. Certifying compilation helps to increase both compiler robustness and program safety. Compiler robustness is improved since some compiler errors can be caught by checking the object code against the certificate immediately after compilation. Program safety is improved because the object code and certificate alone are sufficient to establish safety: even if the object code and certificate are produced on an unknown machine by an unknown compiler and sent over an untrusted network, safe execution is guaranteed as long as the code and certificate pass the verifier. Existing work in certifying compilation has addressed statically generated code. In this paper, we extend this to code generated at run time. Our goal is to combine certifying compilation with run-time code generation to produce programs that are both verifiably safe and extremely fast. To achieve this goal, we present two new languages with explicit run-time code generation constructs: Cyclone, a type safe dialect of C, and TAL/T, a type safe assembly language. We have designed and implemented a system that translates a safe C program into Cyclone, which is then compiled to TAL/T, and finally assembled into executable object code. This paper focuses on our overall approach and the front end of our system; details about TAL/T will appear in a subsequent paper.

We present # CIL , a typed #-calculus which serves as the foundation for a typed intermediate language for optimizing compilers for higher-order polymorphic programming languages. The key innovation of # CIL is a novel formulation of intersection and union types and flow labels on both terms and types. These flow types can encode polyvariant control and data flow information within a polymorphically typed program representation. Flow types can guide a compiler in generating customized data representations in a strongly typed setting. Since # CIL enjoys confluence, standardization, and subject reduction properties, it is a valuable tool for reasoning about programs and program transformations.