Goal-Directed Value Profiling

Compilers can exploit knowledge that a variable has a fixed known value at a program point for optimizations such as code specialization and constant folding. Recent work has shown that it is possible to take advantage of such optimizations, and thereby obtain significant performance improvements, even if a variable cannot be statically guaranteed to have a fixed constant value. To do this profitably, however, it is necessary to take into account information about the runtime distribution of values taken on by variables