Towards a framework for stochastic performance optimizations in compilers and interpreters - An architecture overview

Modern compilers and interpreters provide code optimizations before and during run-time to stay competitive with alternative execution environments, thus moving required domain knowledge about the compilation process away from the developer and speeding up resulting software. These optimizations are often based on formal proof, or alternatively have recovery paths as backup. This publication proposes an architecture utilizing abstract syntax trees (ASTs) to optimize the runtime performance of code with stochastic - search based - machine learning techniques. From these AST modifying optimizations a pattern mining approach attempts to find transformation patterns which are applicable to a software language. The application of these patterns happens during the parsing process or the programs run-time. Future work consists of implementing and extending the presented architecture, with a considerable focus on the mining of transformation patterns.