Postiz: Extending Post-increment Addressing for Loop Optimization and Code Size Reduction

Abstract

Memory access instructions with auto-addressing modes are prevalent in various Instruction Set Architectures (ISAs), yet their use in compilers remains limited. Existing methods address code optimization in one of two ways: they either focus on reducing code size, but are constrained to basic block-level optimizations and may not fully exploit architectural benefits, or they optimize loop performance, often neglecting the advantages of post-increment instructions and focusing primarily on innermost loops while leaving outer loops unoptimized. To address these shortcomings and meet the needs of real-world Machine Learning (ML) applications, we introduce Postiz, a novel post-increment loop optimization technique. Postiz extends post-increment optimizations beyond traditional limits, incorporating enhancements for inner loops, cross-loop regions, and nested loop structures. Through a profitability analysis, Postiz optimizes code judiciously, leveraging architectural advantages and reducing code size without compromising improvement made by other optimizations. Our experiments show that Postiz is effective, achieving an optimization coverage of 98.04% on MobileNet and BERT benchmarks. In comparison to default LLVM optimization, Postiz generates approximately four times more post-increment instructions. Moreover, it reduces code size by an average of 9.45% across various platforms. These improvements represent significant advancements over current methods, showcasing Postiz’s potential to enhance compiler optimizations in a meaningful way.