ProfiX: Improving Profile-Guided Optimization in Compilers with Graph Neural Networks

Profile-guided optimization (PGO) advances the frontiers of compiler optimization by leveraging dynamic runtime information to generate highly optimized binaries. Traditional instrumentation-based profiling collects accurate profile data but often suffers from heavy runtime overhead. In contrast, sampling-based profiling is more efficient and scalable when collecting profile data while avoiding intrusive source code modifications. However, accurately collecting execution profiles via sampling remains challenging, especially when applied to fully optimized binaries. Such inaccurate profile data can restrict the benefits of PGO. This paper presents P ROFI X, a machine learning-guided approach based on hybrid GNN architecture that addresses the problem of profile inference, aiming to correct inaccuracies in the profiles collected by sampling. Experiments on the SPEC 2017 benchmarks demonstrate that P ROFI X achieves up to a 9.15% performance improvement compared to the state-of-the-art traditional algorithm and an average 6.26% improvement over the baseline machine learning models. These results highlight the effectiveness of P ROFI X in optimizing real-world application profiles.