Automatic selection of compiler options using non-parametric inferential statistics

In this paper we propose a statistical method to determine the setting of compiler options. Conventionally, programmers use standard - ox settings which are provided by compiler developers. However in order to obtain maximal performance, it is necessary to tune the compiler setting for the application as well as the underlying architecture. In this paper we propose a methodology to configure compiler options automatically using profile information. We apply non-parametric statistical analysis, in particular the Mann-Whitney test, to decide whether to turn on or to turn off compiler flags. This approach produces compiler settings of gcc 3.3.1 for the SPEC2000 benchmark suite that outperform the standard - ox switches on a Pentium 4 processor.