CRPC-TR92208-S:  Compiler Blockability of Numerical Algorithms

Steve Carr, Ken Kennedy

April 1992, Revised:  January, 1993

Over the past decade microprocessor design strategtes have focused on 
increasing the computational power on a single chip. Unfortunately, 
memory speeds have not kept pace. The result is an imbalance between 
computation speed and memory speed This imbalance is leading machine 
designers to use more complicated memory hierarchies. In turn, 
programmers are explicitly restructuring codes to perform well on 
particular memory systems, leading to machine-specific programs. This 
paper describes our investigation into compiler technology designed to 
obviate the need for machine-specific programming. Our results reveal 
that through the use of compiler optimizations many numerical algorithms 
can be expressed in a natural form while retaining good memory 
performance.