SSA Translation Is an Abstract Interpretation

Static single assignment (SSA) form is a popular intermediate representation that helps implement useful static analyses, including global value numbering (GVN), sparse dataflow analyses, or SMT-based abstract interpretation or model checking. However, the precision of the SSA translation itself dep...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of ACM on programming languages Vol. 7; no. POPL; pp. 1895 - 1924
Main Author: Lemerre, Matthieu
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: New York, NY, USA ACM 09.01.2023
Series:POPL 2023 - the 50th ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages
Subjects:
Abstraction
Compilers
Computer Science
Equational logic and rewriting
Formal software verification
Program analysis
Program verification
Programming Languages
Software and its engineering
Theory of computation
Static Single Assignment (SSA)
Cyclic term graph
Abstract interpretation
Theory of computation → Program analysis
Formal software verification
CCS Concepts: • Software and its engineering → Compilers
Abstraction
Program verification
Equational logic and rewriting Static Single Assignment (SSA)
ISSN:2475-1421, 2475-1421
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Static single assignment (SSA) form is a popular intermediate representation that helps implement useful static analyses, including global value numbering (GVN), sparse dataflow analyses, or SMT-based abstract interpretation or model checking. However, the precision of the SSA translation itself depends on static analyses, and a priori static analysis is even indispensable in the case of low-level input languages like machine code. To solve this chicken-and-egg problem, we propose to turn the SSA translation into a standard static analysis based on abstract interpretation. This allows the SSA translation to be combined with other static analyses in a single pass, taking advantage of the fact that it is more precise to combine analyses than applying passes in sequence. We illustrate the practicality of these results by writing a simple dataflow analysis that performs SSA translation, optimistic global value numbering, sparse conditional constant propagation, and loop-invariant code motion in a single small pass; and by presenting a multi-language static analyzer for both C and machine code that uses the SSA abstract domain as its main intermediate representation.
ISSN:2475-1421
2475-1421
DOI:10.1145/3571258