it sounds like you're getting lots of code duplication. 1) try running a common subexpression elimination process on your code before doing the autodiffing, and create a procedure for each shared expression 2) for prim ops, again, have a procedure created for the diffed version instead of inlining, and sub in the procedure instead.

perhaps something like these ideas would help

If you want an example of a nice high level Auto diff lib, a nice one that works via operator overloading is http://hackage.haskell.org/package/ad , which seems quite nice though I've not had the opportunity to use it myself.

yes, optimizing compilers such as gcc use algorithms that are superlinear in code size when they're optimizing. Perhaps you should instead try out the operator overloading approach (and see if you can )?

gl :-)

Aside: When I hear the phrase execution trace in the context of program analysis, i think abstract interpretation, though I'm not sure if thats relevant for you.

cheers!