NOTICE: A Framework for Non-functional Testing of Compilers

Overview & Synopsis

—Generally, compiler users apply different optimizations to generate efficient code with respect to non-functional properties such as energy consumption, execution time, etc. However, due to the huge number of optimizations provided by modern compilers, finding the best optimization sequence for a specific objective and a given program is more and more challenging. This paper proposes NOTICE, a component-based framework for non-functional testing of compilers through the monitoring of generated code in a controlled sand-boxing environment. We evaluate the effectiveness of our approach by verifying the optimizations performed by the GCC compiler. Our experimental results show that our approach is able to auto-tune compilers according to user requirements and construct optimizations that yield to better performance results than standard optimization levels. We also demonstrate that NOTICE can be used to automatically construct optimization levels that represent optimal trade-offs between multiple non-functional properties such as execution time and resource usage requirements.