Feasibility of achieving automatic view construction solely via C++ reflections

Determine whether C++ compilers can, using only C++ reflection facilities, implement an automatic, multi-step transformation pipeline that constructs temporary local data views by performing out-of-place AoS-to-SoA reordering, eliminating unused (dead) data accesses based on program analysis, and enabling aggressive vectorization, without requiring additional annotations or code rewrites beyond reflections.

Background

The paper proposes compiler-guided, annotation-based AoS-to-SoA conversions with automatically constructed data views for improved performance. It notes that, in theory, similar transformations might be realized via C++ reflections, where compiler optimization passes could leverage reflection metadata to reorder data out-of-place, eliminate dead data access, and vectorize.

However, the authors state that it remains uncertain whether compilers will be able to provide such complex, multi-step code transformations solely via reflections in the near future, and point out that reflections currently require code rewrites and no automatic view constructions are available.