Type-Preserving Flat Closure Optimization

Type-preserving compilation seeks to make intent as much as a part of compilation as computation. Specifications of intent in the form of types are preserved and exploited during compilation and linking, alongside the mere computation of a program. This provides lightweight guarantees for compilation, optimization, and linking. Unfortunately, type-preserving compilation typically interferes with important optimizations. In this paper, we study typed closure representation and optimization. We analyze limitations in prior typed closure conversion representations, and the requirements of many important closure optimizations. We design a new typed closure representation in our Flat-Closure Calculus (FCC) that admits all these optimizations, prove type safety and subject reduction of FCC, prove type preservation from an existing closure converted IR to FCC, and implement common closure optimizations for FCC.

CCS Concepts: • Theory of computation → Type structures; • Software and its engineering → Formal software verification; Software performance.