SCAF

SCAF: A Speculation-Aware Collaborative Dependence Analysis Framework

SCAF is an innovative dependence analysis framework that combines in a modular fashion memory analyses and (optionally) speculative assertions.

Notice

The full implementation of SCAF is not yet integrated in this repository. All the currectly available memory analysis modules are included, but the speculation modules along with a few other components (e.g., profilers) are currently part of another repository (https://github.com/PrincetonUniversity/cpf).

Publications

The novelty, design, implementation, and evaluation of this work is described in the PLDI '20 paper by Apostolakis et al. titled "SCAF: A Speculation-Aware Dependence Analysis Framework" (ACM DL, PDF, Talk, Abstract).

To reproduce the evaluation results presented in the PLDI 2020 paper, please refer to the artifact of the paper:

This work builds upon CAF (CGO '17 by Johnson et al., ACM DL).

If you use SCAF in a publication, we would appreciate a citation to the PLDI '20 paper:

@inproceedings{apostolakis:2020:pldi,
author = {Apostolakis, Sotiris and Xu, Ziyang and Tan, Zujun and Chan, Greg and Campanoni, Simone and August, David I.},
title = {SCAF: A Speculation-Aware Collaborative Dependence Analysis Framework},
year = {2020},
isbn = {9781450376136},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3385412.3386028},
doi = {10.1145/3385412.3386028},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 41st ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation},
pages = {638–654},
numpages = {17},
keywords = {collaboration, dependence analysis, speculation},
location = {London, UK},
series = {PLDI 2020}
}

Version Numbering Scheme

The version number is in the form of [v Major.Minor.Revision ]

• Major: Each major version matches a specific LLVM version (e.g., version 9 matches LLVM 9, version 11 matches LLVM 11)
• Minor: Starts from 0, each minor version represents either one or more API replacements/removals that might impact the users OR a forced update every six months (the minimum minor update frequency)
• Revision: Starts from 0; each revision version may include bug fixes or incremental improvements

Update Frequency

• Major: Matches the LLVM releases on a best-effort basis
• Minor: At least once per six months, at most once per month (1/month ~ 2/year)
• Revision: At least once per month, at most twice per week (2/week ~ 1/month)

Prerequisites

LLVM 9.0.1

Build SCAF

To build and install SCAF, run from the repository root directory: make

Run make clean from the root directory to clean the repository.

Run make uninstall from the root directory to uninstall SCAF.

Configuration

SCAF is customizable and can be used as a conservative memory analysis if the speculation modules are disabled.

Users

If you have any trouble using this framework feel free to create an issue! We will try our best to help.

Contributions

We welcome contributions from the community to improve this framework and evolve it to cater for more users.

License

SCAF is licensed under the MIT License.