Online COde Layout OptimizationS via OCOLOS

Appeared in IEEE Micro .

Abstract

The processor front-end has become an increasingly important bottleneck in recent years due to growing application code footprints, particularly in data centers. Profile-guided optimizations performed by compilers represent a promising approach, as they rearrange code to maximize instruction cache locality and branch prediction efficiency along a relatively small number of hot code paths. However, these optimizations require continuous profiling and rebuilding of applications to ensure that the code layout matches the collected profiles. In this paper, we propose OCOLOS, the first online code layout optimization system for unmodified applications written in unmanaged languages. OCOLOS allows profile-guided optimization to be performed on a running process, instead of being performed offline and requiring the application to be re-launched. Our experiments show that OCOLOS can accelerate MySQL by up to 41%.

Publication date:
May 2023

Authors:
Yuxuan Zhang
Tanvir Ahmed Khan
Gilles Pokam
Baris Kasikci
Heiner Litz
Joseph Devietti

Projects:

Available media

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Bibtex entry

@article{Micro-Zhang-2023,
  author       = {Yuxuan Zhang and Tanvir Ahmed Khan and Gilles Pokam and Baris Kasikci and Heiner Litz and Joseph Devietti},
  title        = {Online {COde} Layout {OptimizationS} via {OCOLOS}},
  journal      = {IEEE Micro},
  volume       = {},
  month        = may,
  year         = {2023},
}