Analyzing Program Performance With Sun WorkShop

9. Loop contains backward flow of control

The loop contains a GOTO or other control flow up and out of the body of the loop. That is, some statement inside the loop appears to the compiler to jump back to some previously executed portion of code. As with the case of a loop that contains multiple exits, this loop is not safe to parallelize.

If you can reduce or minimize backward flows of control, the compiler will be able to perform more aggressive optimizations.