A compiler approach to scalable concurrent program design

The programmer's most powerful tool for controlling complexity in program design is abstraction. We seek to use abstraction in the design of concurrent programs, so as to separate design decisions concerned with decomposition, communication, synchronization, mapping, granularity, and load balancing. This paper describes programming and compiler techniques intended to facilitate this design strategy. The programming techniques are based on a core programming notation with two important properties: the ability to separate concurrent programming concerns, and extensibility with reusable programmer-defined abstractions. The compiler techniques are based on a simple transformation system together with a set of compilation transformations and portable run-time support. The transformation system allows programmer-defined abstractions to be defined as source-to-source transformations that convert abstractions into the core notation. The same transformation system is used to apply compilation transformations that incrementally transform the core notation toward an abstract concurrent machine. This machine can be implemented on a variety of concurrent architectures using simple run-time support. The transformation, compilation, and run-time system techniques have been implemented and are incorporated in a public-domain program development toolkit. This toolkit operates on a wide variety of networked workstations, multicomputers, and shared-memory multiprocessors. It includes a program transformer, concurrent compiler, syntax checker, debugger, performance analyzer, and execution animator. A variety of substantial applications have been developed using the toolkit, in areas such as climate modeling and fluid dynamics

Intelligent systems in manufacturing: current developments and future prospects

Global competition and rapidly changing customer requirements are demanding increasing changes in manufacturing environments. Enterprises are required to constantly redesign their products and continuously reconfigure their manufacturing systems. Traditional approaches to manufacturing systems do not fully satisfy this new situation. Many authors have proposed that artificial intelligence will bring the flexibility and efficiency needed by manufacturing systems. This paper is a review of artificial intelligence techniques used in manufacturing systems. The paper first defines the components of a simplified intelligent manufacturing systems (IMS), the different Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to be considered and then shows how these AI techniques are used for the components of IMS

Computer-aided programming for multiprocessing systems

As both the number of processors and the complexity of problems to be solved increase, programming multiprocessing systems becomes more difficult and error-prone. This report discusses parallel models of computation and tools for computer-aided programming (CAP). Program development tools are necessary since programmers are not able to develop complex parallel programs efficiently. In particular, a CAP tool, named Hypertool, is described here. It performs scheduling and handles the communication primitive insertion automatically so that many errors are eliminated. It also generates the performance estimates and other program quality measures to help programmers in improving their algorithms and programs. Experiments have shown that up to a 300% performance improvement can be achieved by computer-aided programming

Percolation scheduling for non-VLIW machines

Percolation Scheduling, a technique for compile-time code parallelization, has proven very successful for exploiting fine-grain irregular parallelism in ordinary programs. Currently, this technology is targeted only to VLIW (Very Long Instruction Word) machines, which have the advantages of 'free' synchronization and communication. Shared memory multi-processors can simulate the execution characteristics of VLIW machines with the use of static barriers. Preliminary results show that Percolation Scheduling can be used with good results on this type of architecture by increasing the granularity from operation level to source statement level, removing any redundant synchronization, and providing an efficient implementation of multi-way jumps

Top down, bottom up structured programming and program structuring

New design and programming techniques for shuttle software. Based on previous Apollo experience, recommendations are made to apply top-down structured programming techniques to shuttle software. New software verification techniques for large software systems are recommended. HAL, the higher order language selected for the shuttle flight code, is discussed and found to be adequate for implementing these techniques. Recommendations are made to apply the workable combination of top-down, bottom-up methods in the management of shuttle software. Program structuring is discussed relevant to both programming and management techniques

Gunrock: A High-Performance Graph Processing Library on the GPU

For large-scale graph analytics on the GPU, the irregularity of data access and control flow, and the complexity of programming GPUs have been two significant challenges for developing a programmable high-performance graph library. "Gunrock", our graph-processing system designed specifically for the GPU, uses a high-level, bulk-synchronous, data-centric abstraction focused on operations on a vertex or edge frontier. Gunrock achieves a balance between performance and expressiveness by coupling high performance GPU computing primitives and optimization strategies with a high-level programming model that allows programmers to quickly develop new graph primitives with small code size and minimal GPU programming knowledge. We evaluate Gunrock on five key graph primitives and show that Gunrock has on average at least an order of magnitude speedup over Boost and PowerGraph, comparable performance to the fastest GPU hardwired primitives, and better performance than any other GPU high-level graph library.Comment: 14 pages, accepted by PPoPP'16 (removed the text repetition in the previous version v5

An overview of decision table literature 1982-1995.

This report gives an overview of the literature on decision tables over the past 15 years. As much as possible, for each reference, an author supplied abstract, a number of keywords and a classification are provided. In some cases own comments are added. The purpose of these comments is to show where, how and why decision tables are used. The literature is classified according to application area, theoretical versus practical character, year of publication, country or origin (not necessarily country of publication) and the language of the document. After a description of the scope of the interview, classification results and the classification by topic are presented. The main body of the paper is the ordered list of publications with abstract, classification and comments.

Component-based simulation for a reconfiguration study of transitic systems

This paper is organized as follows. Part A presents the context of reconfiguring transitic systems and the main idea in implementing the decision step. It comprises sections 1 to 3. Section 3 presents an example that illustrates the concepts presented in the next sections. Parts B and C express the models and principles used to simulate transitic systems, the result of which will be helpful for choosing the new configuration. Part B focuses mainly on models. It comprises sections 4 to 6. Part C focuses mainly on simulation principles. It comprises sections 7 to 10