Exploiting short-lived variables in superscalar processors

In this paper we present experimental evidence showing that a significant number of program variables are short-lived in the sense that their live ranges span only a few instructions. In dynamically scheduled superscalar processors using mechanisms like the reorder buffer, the live ranges for these short-lived variables may occur entirely within the reorder buffer. Therefore, there should be no need to retire (commit) the values produced by these live ranges to the register file. On the basis of this observation, we have proposed a scheme that includes a compiler analysis and a simple architecture extension to avoid the useless commits of the values generated for these short-lived variables. Moreover we have proposed an extension to the existing register allocation mechanism that does not assign these short-lived variables to locations in the register file. Analyses and results are presented.