The Diagram as a Vehicle of Transposition in the Quest of Architectural Form:: Program | Typology | Drawing

This paper discusses the impact of diagrammatic processes into architectural design. The diagram may be related to its scientific origin as a means of analysis and comparison of data. In accordance with diagrammatic interpretations of Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, also with Gilles Deleuze's notion of "abstract machine,” the diagram operates in architecture as a means expressing the dynamic relationships among different elements having spatial significance. With the use of diagrams, abstract information of analysis is transposed into architectural design by using codes of spatial definition. The diagram may thus be distinguished from architectural form, as the connection between them remains metaphorical. From a theoretical point, such an explanation of the diagram is illuminating, also tying up with computational practices using advanced CAD software; however, ambiguities may be raised due to the fact that, in practice, essential issues regarding the diagram's overall functionality are often being disregarded. For example: under what conditions might it be useful arguing that the diagram has no relationship whatsoever with a sketch drawing of an architectural idea? Or, upon the assumption that the diagram is a tool aiding the conceptual manipulation of data and besides any of its representational capabilities, how would it be beneficial denying its direct or indirect contribution as a harbinger to architectural synthesis? In response, this paper redeploys the applications of the diagram in the transition from abstract notions to the first graphic sign and the gradual development of an architectural project. Respectively, the diagram is related to data analysis, the defining of the program, the building type and the architectural drawing

First Class Call Stacks: Exploring Head Reduction

Weak-head normalization is inconsistent with functional extensionality in the call-by-name $\lambda$-calculus. We explore this problem from a new angle via the conflict between extensionality and effects. Leveraging ideas from work on the $\lambda$-calculus with control, we derive and justify alternative operational semantics and a sequence of abstract machines for performing head reduction. Head reduction avoids the problems with weak-head reduction and extensionality, while our operational semantics and associated abstract machines show us how to retain weak-head reduction's ease of implementation.Comment: In Proceedings WoC 2015, arXiv:1606.0583

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

An Abstract Machine for Unification Grammars

This work describes the design and implementation of an abstract machine, Amalia, for the linguistic formalism ALE, which is based on typed feature structures. This formalism is one of the most widely accepted in computational linguistics and has been used for designing grammars in various linguistic theories, most notably HPSG. Amalia is composed of data structures and a set of instructions, augmented by a compiler from the grammatical formalism to the abstract instructions, and a (portable) interpreter of the abstract instructions. The effect of each instruction is defined using a low-level language that can be executed on ordinary hardware. The advantages of the abstract machine approach are twofold. From a theoretical point of view, the abstract machine gives a well-defined operational semantics to the grammatical formalism. This ensures that grammars specified using our system are endowed with well defined meaning. It enables, for example, to formally verify the correctness of a compiler for HPSG, given an independent definition. From a practical point of view, Amalia is the first system that employs a direct compilation scheme for unification grammars that are based on typed feature structures. The use of amalia results in a much improved performance over existing systems. In order to test the machine on a realistic application, we have developed a small-scale, HPSG-based grammar for a fragment of the Hebrew language, using Amalia as the development platform. This is the first application of HPSG to a Semitic language.Comment: Doctoral Thesis, 96 pages, many postscript figures, uses pstricks, pst-node, psfig, fullname and a macros fil

Lazy Evaluation and Delimited Control

The call-by-need lambda calculus provides an equational framework for reasoning syntactically about lazy evaluation. This paper examines its operational characteristics. By a series of reasoning steps, we systematically unpack the standard-order reduction relation of the calculus and discover a novel abstract machine definition which, like the calculus, goes "under lambdas." We prove that machine evaluation is equivalent to standard-order evaluation. Unlike traditional abstract machines, delimited control plays a significant role in the machine's behavior. In particular, the machine replaces the manipulation of a heap using store-based effects with disciplined management of the evaluation stack using control-based effects. In short, state is replaced with control. To further articulate this observation, we present a simulation of call-by-need in a call-by-value language using delimited control operations