  The use of pointers and data-structures based on pointers results in circular
memory references that are interpreted by a vital compiler analysis, namely
pointer analysis. For a pair of memory references at a program point, a typical
pointer analysis specifies if the points-to relation between them may exist,
definitely does not exist, or definitely exists. The "may be" case, which
describes the points-to relation for most of the pairs, cannot be dealt with by
most compiler optimizations. This is so to guarantee the soundness of these
optimizations. However, the "may be" case can be capitalized by the modern
class of speculative optimizations if the probability that two memory
references alias can be measured. Focusing on multithreading, a prevailing
technique of programming, this paper presents a new flow-sensitive technique
for probabilistic pointer analysis of multithreaded programs. The proposed
technique has the form of a type system and calculates the probability of every
points-to relation at each program point. The key to our approach is to
calculate the points-to information via a post-type derivation. The use of type
systems has the advantage of associating each analysis results with a
justification (proof) for the correctness of the results. This justification
has the form of a type derivation and is very much required in applications
like certified code.

Programming Languages;Logic in Computer Science