Abstract

Although they are powerful intermediate representations for compilers, pure dataflow graphs are incomplete, and perhaps even undesirable, machine languages. They are incomplete because it is hard to encode critical sections and imperative operations which are essential for the efficient execution of operating system functions, such as resource management. They may be undesirable because they imply a uniform dynamic scheduling policy for all instructions, preventing a compiler from expressing a static schedule which could result in greater run time efficiency, both by reducing redundant operand synchronization, and by using high speed registers to communicate state between instructions. In this paper, we develop a new machine-level programming model which builds upon two previous improvements to the dataflow execution model: sequential scheduling of instructions, and multiported registers for expression temporaries. Surprisingly, these improvements have required almost no architectural...

Citations