Function inlining with code size limitation in embedded systems

Abstract EN

Function in lining is a widely known technique that has been adopted in compiler optimization research domain.

In lining functions can eliminate the overhead which is resulted from function calls, but with in lining, the code size also grows unpredictably ; this is not suitable for embedded processors whose memory size is relatively small.

In this paper, we introduce a novel function in lining approach using a heuristic rebate ratio ; functions to be in lined are selected according to their rebate_ratios in a descending way.

This kind of code optimization operation works at the source code level.

Compared with other algorithms, ours are easier to implement.

Our target is to get an optimal result of function in lining which attempts to achieve the maximum performance improvement while keeping the code size within a defined limit.