Perfrewrite -- Program Complexity Analysis via Source Code Instrumentation

Abstract

Most program profiling methods output the execution time of one specific program execution, but not its computational complexity class in terms of the big-O notation. Perfrewrite is a tool based on LLVM's Clang compiler to rewrite a program such that it tracks semantic information while the program executes and uses it to guess memory usage, communication and computational complexity. While source code instrumentation is a standard technique for profiling, using it for deriving formulas is an uncommon approach.