SHF: Small: Pa3S: Towards Pointer Analysis as a Service

指针分析是软件构造、维护和性能优化中广泛应用的一种基本技术，如编译器优化、缺陷检测、安全分析、测试、调试、验证、程序理解等。然而，尽管经过了几十年的研究，指针分析的原则性承诺与其在现实世界中的实际使用之间仍然存在着巨大的差距。由于指针分析固有的计算复杂性，目前大多数产品编译器只使用不精确的过程内指针分析，而全程序过程间指针分析很少成功应用于大型现实应用程序，如Linux内核或Google Chrome浏览器。该项目将创建一个用于指针分析的软件即服务(SaaS)平台，该平台提供一组标准API，用于计算指针分析并回答用户通过Internet进行的指针分析查询，而无论用户的应用程序、执行环境或物理位置如何。SaaS通过使用集中式服务器计算和存储指针分析结果，并在用户之间有效地共享计算和结果，为解决指针分析的性能和可用性挑战提供了一种有前途的解决方案。为了实现这样一个平台，该项目将开发新的分布式增量指针分析算法，用于指针分析查询的新API，以及通过编译器优化和错误检测对大型应用程序进行评估。如果成功，这些技术将使指针分析更具可扩展性，并更广泛地适用于大型复杂代码库，最终导致更快、更安全的最终用户软件产品。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Pointer analysis is a fundamental technique that underpins a wide range of applications in software construction, maintenance and performance optimization, such as compiler optimization, bug detection, security analysis, testing, debugging, verification, program comprehension, and so on. However, despite decades of research there still exists a huge gap between the principled promise of pointer analysis and its practical usage in the real world. Due to the inherent computational complexity of pointer analysis, most production compilers today use only imprecise intra-procedural pointer analyses, and a whole-program interprocedural pointer analysis has rarely been successfully applied to large real-world applications such as the Linux kernel or the Google Chrome browser.This project will create a software as a service (SaaS) platform for pointer analysis, which provides a set of standard APIs for computing pointer analysis and answering pointer analysis queries from users over the Internet, regardless of their applications, execution environments, or physical locations. SaaS provides a promising solution to address the performance and usability challenges of pointer analysis by using a centralized server to compute and memorize the pointer analysis results, and sharing the computation and results effectively among users. To realize such a platform, this project will develop new distributed incremental pointer-analysis algorithms, new APIs for pointer-analysis queries, and evaluations on large-scale applications with compiler optimizations and bug detection. If successful, these techniques will make pointer analysis more scalable and more widely applicable to large complex code bases, eventually leading to faster and more secure end-user software products.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.