A Hotspot-Driven Semi-automated Competitive Analysis Framework for Identifying Compiler Key Optimizations

High-performance compilers play an important role in improving the run-time performance of a program, and it is hard and time-consuming to identify the key optimizations implemented in a high-performance compiler with traditional program analysis. In this paper, we propose a hotspot-driven semi-automated competitive analysis framework for identifying key optimizations through comparing the hotspot codes generated by any two different compilers. Our framework is platform-agnostic and works well on both AArch64 and X64 platforms, which automates the stages of hotspot detection and dynamic binary instrumentation only for selected hotspots. With the instrumented instruction characterization information, the framework users can analyze the binary code within a much smaller scope to explore practical optimizations implemented in any of the compilers compared. To demonstrate the effectiveness and practicality, we conduct experiments on SPECspeed 2017 Integer benchmarks(CINT2017) and their binaries generated by open-source GCC compiler versus proprietary Huawei BiSheng and Intel ICC compilers on AArch64 and X64 platforms respectively. Empirical studies show that our methods can identify several significant optimizations that have been implemented by proprietary compilers and as well can be implemented in open-source compilers. To Hangzhou Hongjun Microelectronics Technology(Hjmicro), the identified key optimizations shed great light on optimizing their GCC-based product compiler, which delivers 20.83% improvement for SPECrate 2017 Integer on AArch64 platform.