SRF Coloring: Stream Register File Allocation via Graph Coloring

Stream Register File (SRF) is a large on-chip memory of the stream processor and its efficient management is essential for good performance. Current stream programming languages expose the management of SRF to the programmer, incurring heavy burden on the programmer and bringing difficulties to inheriting the legacy codes. SF95 is the language developed for FT64 which is the first 64-bit stream processor designed for scientific applications. SF95 conceals SRF from the programmer and leaves the management of SRF to its compiler. In this paper, we present a compiler approach named SRF Coloring to manage SRF automatically. The novelties of this paper are: first, it is the first time to use the graph coloring-based algorithm for the SRF management; second, an algorithm framework for SRF Coloring that is well suited to the FT64 architecture is proposed — this framework is based on a well-understood graph coloring algorithm for register allocation, together with some modifications to deal with the unusual aspects of SRF problem; third, the SRF Coloring algorithm is implemented in SF95Compiler, a compiler designed for FT64 and SF95. The experimental results show that our approach represents a practical and promising solution to SRF allocation. Electronic Supplementary Material  The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos. 60621003 and 60633050.