Scalability-First Pointer Analysis with Self-Tuning Context-Sensitivity

Yue Li, Tian Tan, Anders Møller, Yannis Smaragdakis

Research output: Contribution to book/anthology/report/proceedingArticle in proceedingsResearchpeer-review

52 Citations (Scopus)
330 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Context-sensitivity is important in pointer analysis to ensure high precision, but existing techniques suffer from unpredictable scalability. Many variants of context-sensitivity exist, and it is difficult to choose one that leads to reasonable analysis time and obtains high precision, without running the analysis multiple times. We present the Scaler framework that addresses this problem. Scaler efficiently estimates the amount of points-to information thatwould be needed to analyze each method with different variants of context-sensitivity. It then selects an appropriate variant for each method so that the total amount of points-to information is bounded, while utilizing the available space to maximize precision. Our experimental results demonstrate that Scaler achieves predictable scalability for all the evaluated programs (e.g., speedups can reach 10x for 2-object-sensitivity), while providing a precision that matches or even exceeds that of the best alternative techniques.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationESEC/FSE 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 26th ACM Joint Meeting on European So ftware Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of So ftware Engineering
EditorsGary T. Leavens, Alessandro Garcia, Corina S. Păsăreanu
Number of pages12
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Publication date26 Oct 2018
Pages129-140
ISBN (Electronic)978-1-4503-5573-5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 26 Oct 2018
EventThe ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE) - Lake Buena Vista, United States
Duration: 4 Nov 20189 Nov 2018
Conference number: 26
https://conf.researchr.org/home/fse-2018

Conference

ConferenceThe ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE)
Number26
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityLake Buena Vista
Period04/11/201809/11/2018
Internet address

Keywords

  • Java
  • points-to analysis
  • static analysis

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