• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.32 no.7
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• pp.683-692
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• 2005

Java specification states that all accesses to an object must be checked at runtime if object refers to null. Since Java is an object-oriented language, object accesses are frequent enough to make null pointer checks affect the performance significantly. In order to reduce the performance degradation, there have been attempts to remove redundant null pointer checks. For example, in a Java environment where a just-in-time (JIT) compiler is used, the JIT compiler removes redundant null pointer check code via code analysis. This paper proposes a technique to remove additional null pointer check code that could not be removed by previous JIT compilation techniques, via early null pointer check using an architectural feature called predication. Generally, null point check code consists of two instructions: a compare and a branch. Our idea is moving the compare instruction that is usually located just before an use of an object, to the point right after the object is defined so that the total number of compare instructions is reduced. This results in reduction of dynamic and static compare instructions by 3.21$\%$ and 1.98$\%$. respectively, in SPECjvm98 bechmarks, compared to the code that has already been optimized by previous null pointer check elimination techniques. Its performance impact on an Itanium machine is an improvement of 0.32$\%$.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.215-226
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• 2005

Loop invariant code motion (LICM) optimization includes relatively heavy code analyses, thus being not readily applicable to Java Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation where the JIT compilation time is part of the whole running time. 'Classical' LICM optimization first analyzes the code and constructs both the def-use chains and the use-def chains. which are then used for performing code motions. This paper proposes a light-weight LICM algorithm, which requires only the def-use chains of loop invariant code (without use-def chains) by exploiting the fact that the Java virtual machine is based on a stack machine, hence generating code with simpler patterns. We also propose two techniques that allow more code motions than classical LICM techniques. First, unlike previous JIT techniques that uses LICM only in single-path loops for simplicity, we apply LICM to multi-path loops (natural loops) safely for partially redundant code. Secondly, we move loop-invariant, partially-redundant null pointer check code via predication support in Itanium. The proposed techniques were implemented in a JIT compiler for Itanium processor on ORP (Open Runtime Platform) Java virtual machine of Intel. On SPECjvrn98 benchmarks, the proposed technique increases the JIT compilation overhead by the geometric mean of 1.3％, yet it improves the total running time by the geometric mean of 2.2％.