SLAU132Y September 2004 – June 2021
If you are optimizing for code size, tail merging can be very effective for some functions. Tail merging finds basic blocks that end in an identical sequence of instructions and have a common destination. If such a set of blocks is found, the sequence of identical instructions is made into its own block. These instructions are then removed from the set of blocks and replaced with branches to the newly created block. Thus, there is only one copy of the sequence of instructions, rather than one for each block in the set.