Intel® Advisor User Guide

ID 766448
Date 7/13/2023
Public

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Pointer Dereferences

It may be tedious to find all the uses of a shared variable in a task's dynamic extent, but at least it is relatively straightforward. The situation is much worse when the Dependencies tool reports that you have a sharing problem on a pointer dereference. In general:

  • A dereference of a pointer expression may or may not refer to the same object as some other dereference of a pointer expression with the same type.

  • Different executions of a pointer expression dereference may or may not refer to the same object.

  • If you have a variable whose address is taken, a dereference of a pointer expression may or may not refer to that variable.

However, suppose that your program has an abstract data type whose objects are implemented as dynamically allocated data structures. You may be able to step back from the individual pointer dereferences involved in a sharing problem and say: "These are just implementation details in an access to an abstract object." If you can prove that the access pattern for the abstract object satisfies the incidental sharing pattern, you can apply the techniques from this topic:

  • Within the task, create a private object of the abstract data type.

  • Make a reference to the private object available throughout the task.

  • Replace references to the original object with references to the private object.

  • Destroy the private object before the task exits.

The point is to ignore the pointer dereferences, and solve the problem in terms of the abstraction that they are implementing.

Additional suggestions for dealing with sharing problems with pointer-accessed memory locations can be found in Memory That is Accessed Through a Pointer .