History
For procedural, or Algol-like languages, interprocedural analysis and optimization appears to have entered commercial practice in the early 1970s. IBM's PL/I Optimizing Compiler performed interprocedural analysis to understand the side effects of both procedure calls and exceptions (cast, in PL/I terms as "on conditions") and in papers by Fran Allen. Work on compilation of APL was, of necessity, interprocedural.
The techniques of interprocedural analysis and optimization were the subject of academic research in the 1980s and 1990s. They re-emerged into the commercial compiler world in the early 1990s with compilers from both Convex (the "Application Compiler" for the Convex C4) and from Ardent (the compiler for the Ardent Titan). These compilers demonstrated that the technologies could be made sufficiently fast to be acceptable in a commercial compiler; subsequently interprocedural techniques have appeared in a number of commercial and non-commercial systems.
Read more about this topic: Interprocedural Optimization
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“American time has stretched around the world. It has become the dominant tempo of modern history, especially of the history of Europe.”
—Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978)
“The custard is setting; meanwhile
I not only have my own history to worry about
But am forced to fret over insufficient details related to large
Unfinished concepts that can never bring themselves to the point
Of being, with or without my help, if any were forthcoming.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“One classic American landscape haunts all of American literature. It is a picture of Eden, perceived at the instant of history when corruption has just begun to set in. The serpent has shown his scaly head in the undergrowth. The apple gleams on the tree. The old drama of the Fall is ready to start all over again.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)