FIRST FAST SINK - A COMPILER ALGORITHM FOR BARRIER PLACEMENT OPTIMIZATION

This paper describes a new compiler algorithm to reduce the number of barrier synchronisations in parallelised programs. A preliminary techn ique to rapidly determine critical data dependences is developed. This forms the basis of the First Fast Sink (FFS) algorithm which places, provably, the minimal number of barriers in polynomial time for codes with a regular structure. This algorithm is implemented in a prototype compiler and applied to three well known benchmarks. Preliminary resu lts show that it outperforms an existing state-of-the-art commercial c ompiler. Copyright (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.