Peephole optimization is an optimization technique performed on a small set of compiler-generated instructions, known as a peephole or window, that involves replacing the instructions with a logically equivalent set that has better performance.
For example:
The term peephole optimization was introduced by William Marshall McKeeman in 1965.
Peephole optimization replacements include but are not limited to:
Modern compilers often implement peephole optimizations with a pattern matching algorithm.
The following Java bytecode:
aload 1 aload 1 mul
can be replaced with the following which executes faster:
aload 1 dup mul
As for most peephole optimizations, this is based on the relative efficiency of different instructions. In this case, dup (which duplicates and pushes the top of the stack) is known/assumed to be more efficient than aload (which loads a local variable and pushes it onto the stack).
The following source code:
a = b + c; d = a + e;
is straightforwardly compiled to:
but can be optimized to:
If the compiler saves registers on the stack before calling a subroutine and restores them when returning, consecutive calls to subroutines may have redundant stack instructions.
Suppose the compiler generates the following Z80 instructions for each procedure call:
If there were two consecutive subroutine calls, they would look like this:
The sequence POP regs followed by PUSH for the same registers is generally redundant. In cases where it is redundant, a peephole optimization would remove these instructions. In the example, this would cause another redundant POP/PUSH pair to appear in the peephole, and these would be removed in turn. Assuming that subroutine _ADDR2 does not depend on previous register values, removing all of the redundant code in the example above would eventually leave the following code: