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Concept

Register Allocation

Technique

The compiler stage that assigns a program's many variables to a processor's small, fixed number of fast hardware registers, spilling values to slower memory when there are more variables in use at once than there are registers.

Facts
Origin Year
1981 1
Core Principle
Register allocation is the process of assigning local automatic variables and expression results to a limited number of processor registers. 1
Connections

In Field

Invented

Gregory Chaitin devised the graph-coloring approach to register allocation described in his 1981 paper.

Sources
1. Register allocation - Wikipedia
  • Lead section, opening sentence
    Register allocation is the process of assigning local automatic variables and expression results to a limited number of processor registers.
  • References section, Chaitin et al. citation
    Chaitin, Gregory J.; Auslander, Marc A.; Chandra, Ashok K.; Cocke, John; Hopkins, Martin E.; Markstein, Peter W. (1981). "Register allocation via coloring". Computer Languages. 6 (1): 47-57.
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