Type directed cloning for object-oriented programs

Abstract

Object-oriented programming encourages the use of small functions, dynamic dispatch (virtual functions), and inheritance for code reuse. As a result, such programs typically suffer from inferior performance. The problem is that polymorphic functions do not know the exact types of the data they operate on, and hence must use indirection to operate on them. However, most polymorphism is parametric (e.g. templates in C++) which is amenable to elimination through code replication. We present a cloning algorithm which eliminates parametric polymorphism while minimizing code duplication. The effectiveness of this algorithm is demonstrated on a number of concurrent object-oriented programs. Finally, since functions and data structures can be parameterized over properties other than type, this algorithm is applicable to general forward data flow problems.