Wed 17 Jul 2019 16:20 - 16:40 at Mancy - Program Analysis 1 Chair(s): Yannis Smaragdakis

Abstract garbage collection is the application of garbage collection to an abstract interpreter. Existing work has shown that abstract garbage collection can improve both the interpreter’s precision and performance. Current approaches rely on heuristics to decide when to apply abstract garbage collection. Garbage will build up and impact precision and performance when the collection is applied infrequently, while too frequent applications will bring about their own performance overhead. A balance between these tradeoffs is often difficult to strike. We propose a new approach to cope with the buildup of garbage in the results of an abstract interpreter. Our approach is able to eliminate all garbage, therefore obtaining the maximum precision and performance benefits of abstract garbage collection. At the same time, our approach does not require frequent heap traversals, and therefore adds little to the interpreters’s running time. The core of our approach uses reference counting to detect and eliminate garbage as soon as it arises. However, reference counting cannot deal with cycles, and we show that cycles are much more common in an abstract interpreter than in its concrete counterpart. To alleviate this problem, our approach detects cycles and employs reference counting at the level of strongly connected components. While this technique in general works for any system that uses reference counting, we argue that it works particularly well for an abstract interpreter. In fact, we show formally that for the continuation store, where most of the cycles occur, the cycle detection technique only requires O(1) amortized operations per continuation push. We present our approach formally, and provide a proof-of-concept implementation in the Scala-AM framework. We empirically show our approach achieves both the optimal precision and significantly better performance compared to existing approaches to abstract garbage collection.

Wed 17 Jul

Displayed time zone: Belfast change

15:40 - 17:00
Program Analysis 1Research Papers at Mancy
Chair(s): Yannis Smaragdakis University of Athens
15:40
20m
Research paper
Static Analysis for Asynchronous JavaScript Programs
Research Papers
Thodoris Sotiropoulos Athens University of Economics and Business, Ben Livshits Imperial College London, UK
DOI
16:00
20m
Research paper
A Program Logic for First-Order Encapsulated WebAssembly
Research Papers
Conrad Watt University of Cambridge, Petar Maksimović Imperial College London, UK and Mathematical Institute of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Serbia, Neel Krishnaswami Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Philippa Gardner Imperial College London
DOI Media Attached
16:20
20m
Research paper
Garbage-free Abstract Interpretation through Abstract Reference Counting
Research Papers
Noah Van Es Sofware Languages Lab, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Quentin Stiévenart Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, Coen De Roover Vrije Universiteit Brussel
DOI
16:40
20m
Research paper
Eventually Sound Points-To Analysis with Specifications
Research Papers
Osbert Bastani University of Pennsylvania, Rahul Sharma Microsoft Research, Lazaro Clapp Stanford University, Saswat Anand Stanford University, Alex Aiken Stanford University
DOI Media Attached