Sea of nodes is a graph representation of static-single assignment of a program that combines data flow and control flow, and relaxes the control flow from a total order to a partial order, keeping only the orderings required by data flow. 1
The V8 JavaScript engine was once notable for being one of the few large-scale compilers utilizing the sea of nodes approach. However, it has since transitioned to a more traditional CFG IR, citing reasons such as the sea of nodes being too complex, too limited, and too slow for compilation 2.
in a way, SoN is just CFG where pure nodes are floating 1