Efficient Implementations of Software Architectures via Partial Evaluation

摘要

The notion of flexibility (that is, the ability to adapt to changing requirements or execution contexts) is recognized as a key concern in structuring software, and many architectures have been designed to that effect. However, the corresponding implementations often come with performance and code size overheads. The source of inefficiency can be identified to be in the loose integration of components, because flexibility is often present not only at the design level but also in the implementation. To solve this flexibility vs. efficiency dilemma, we advocate the use of partial evaluation, which is an automated technique to produce efficient, specialized instances of generic programs. As supporting case studies, we consider several flexible mechanisms commonly found in software architectures: selective broadcast, pattern matching, interpreters, software layers, and generic libraries. Using Tempo, our specializer for C, we show how partial evaluation can safely optimize implementations of those mechanisms. Because this optimization is automatic, it preserves the original genericity and extensibility of the implementation.