Aliased Register Allocation for Straight-Line Programs Is NP-Complete

Register allocation is NP-complete in general but can be solved in linear time for straight-line programs where each variable has at most one definition point if the bank of registers is homogeneous. In this paper we study registers which may alias: an aliased register can be used both independently or in combination with an adjacent register. Such registers are found in commonly-used architectures such as x86, the HP PA-RISC, the Sun SPARC processor, and MIPS floating point. In 2004, Smith, Ramsey, and Holloway presented the best algorithm for aliased register allocation so far; their algorithm is based on a heuristic for coloring of general graphs. Most architectures with register aliasing allow only

aligned

registers to be combined: for example, the low-address register must have an even number. Open until now is the question of whether working with restricted classes of programs can improve the complexity of aliased register allocation with alignment restrictions. In this paper we show that aliased register allocation with alignment restrictions for straight-line programs is NP-complete.