25,154 research outputs found
Tiramisu: A Polyhedral Compiler for Expressing Fast and Portable Code
This paper introduces Tiramisu, a polyhedral framework designed to generate
high performance code for multiple platforms including multicores, GPUs, and
distributed machines. Tiramisu introduces a scheduling language with novel
extensions to explicitly manage the complexities that arise when targeting
these systems. The framework is designed for the areas of image processing,
stencils, linear algebra and deep learning. Tiramisu has two main features: it
relies on a flexible representation based on the polyhedral model and it has a
rich scheduling language allowing fine-grained control of optimizations.
Tiramisu uses a four-level intermediate representation that allows full
separation between the algorithms, loop transformations, data layouts, and
communication. This separation simplifies targeting multiple hardware
architectures with the same algorithm. We evaluate Tiramisu by writing a set of
image processing, deep learning, and linear algebra benchmarks and compare them
with state-of-the-art compilers and hand-tuned libraries. We show that Tiramisu
matches or outperforms existing compilers and libraries on different hardware
architectures, including multicore CPUs, GPUs, and distributed machines.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1803.0041
Loo.py: transformation-based code generation for GPUs and CPUs
Today's highly heterogeneous computing landscape places a burden on
programmers wanting to achieve high performance on a reasonably broad
cross-section of machines. To do so, computations need to be expressed in many
different but mathematically equivalent ways, with, in the worst case, one
variant per target machine.
Loo.py, a programming system embedded in Python, meets this challenge by
defining a data model for array-style computations and a library of
transformations that operate on this model. Offering transformations such as
loop tiling, vectorization, storage management, unrolling, instruction-level
parallelism, change of data layout, and many more, it provides a convenient way
to capture, parametrize, and re-unify the growth among code variants. Optional,
deep integration with numpy and PyOpenCL provides a convenient computing
environment where the transition from prototype to high-performance
implementation can occur in a gradual, machine-assisted form
Building Efficient Query Engines in a High-Level Language
Abstraction without regret refers to the vision of using high-level
programming languages for systems development without experiencing a negative
impact on performance. A database system designed according to this vision
offers both increased productivity and high performance, instead of sacrificing
the former for the latter as is the case with existing, monolithic
implementations that are hard to maintain and extend. In this article, we
realize this vision in the domain of analytical query processing. We present
LegoBase, a query engine written in the high-level language Scala. The key
technique to regain efficiency is to apply generative programming: LegoBase
performs source-to-source compilation and optimizes the entire query engine by
converting the high-level Scala code to specialized, low-level C code. We show
how generative programming allows to easily implement a wide spectrum of
optimizations, such as introducing data partitioning or switching from a row to
a column data layout, which are difficult to achieve with existing low-level
query compilers that handle only queries. We demonstrate that sufficiently
powerful abstractions are essential for dealing with the complexity of the
optimization effort, shielding developers from compiler internals and
decoupling individual optimizations from each other. We evaluate our approach
with the TPC-H benchmark and show that: (a) With all optimizations enabled,
LegoBase significantly outperforms a commercial database and an existing query
compiler. (b) Programmers need to provide just a few hundred lines of
high-level code for implementing the optimizations, instead of complicated
low-level code that is required by existing query compilation approaches. (c)
The compilation overhead is low compared to the overall execution time, thus
making our approach usable in practice for compiling query engines
C to O-O Translation: Beyond the Easy Stuff
Can we reuse some of the huge code-base developed in C to take advantage of
modern programming language features such as type safety, object-orientation,
and contracts? This paper presents a source-to-source translation of C code
into Eiffel, a modern object-oriented programming language, and the supporting
tool C2Eif. The translation is completely automatic and supports the entire C
language (ANSI, as well as many GNU C Compiler extensions, through CIL) as used
in practice, including its usage of native system libraries and inlined
assembly code. Our experiments show that C2Eif can handle C applications and
libraries of significant size (such as vim and libgsl), as well as challenging
benchmarks such as the GCC torture tests. The produced Eiffel code is
functionally equivalent to the original C code, and takes advantage of some of
Eiffel's object-oriented features to produce safe and easy-to-debug
translations
Loo.py: From Fortran to performance via transformation and substitution rules
A large amount of numerically-oriented code is written and is being written
in legacy languages. Much of this code could, in principle, make good use of
data-parallel throughput-oriented computer architectures. Loo.py, a
transformation-based programming system targeted at GPUs and general
data-parallel architectures, provides a mechanism for user-controlled
transformation of array programs. This transformation capability is designed to
not just apply to programs written specifically for Loo.py, but also those
imported from other languages such as Fortran. It eases the trade-off between
achieving high performance, portability, and programmability by allowing the
user to apply a large and growing family of transformations to an input
program. These transformations are expressed in and used from Python and may be
applied from a variety of settings, including a pragma-like manner from other
languages.Comment: ARRAY 2015 - 2nd ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Libraries,
Languages and Compilers for Array Programming (ARRAY 2015
Introducing Molly: Distributed Memory Parallelization with LLVM
Programming for distributed memory machines has always been a tedious task,
but necessary because compilers have not been sufficiently able to optimize for
such machines themselves. Molly is an extension to the LLVM compiler toolchain
that is able to distribute and reorganize workload and data if the program is
organized in statically determined loop control-flows. These are represented as
polyhedral integer-point sets that allow program transformations applied on
them. Memory distribution and layout can be declared by the programmer as
needed and the necessary asynchronous MPI communication is generated
automatically. The primary motivation is to run Lattice QCD simulations on IBM
Blue Gene/Q supercomputers, but since the implementation is not yet completed,
this paper shows the capabilities on Conway's Game of Life
Several types of types in programming languages
Types are an important part of any modern programming language, but we often
forget that the concept of type we understand nowadays is not the same it was
perceived in the sixties. Moreover, we conflate the concept of "type" in
programming languages with the concept of the same name in mathematical logic,
an identification that is only the result of the convergence of two different
paths, which started apart with different aims. The paper will present several
remarks (some historical, some of more conceptual character) on the subject, as
a basis for a further investigation. The thesis we will argue is that there are
three different characters at play in programming languages, all of them now
called types: the technical concept used in language design to guide
implementation; the general abstraction mechanism used as a modelling tool; the
classifying tool inherited from mathematical logic. We will suggest three
possible dates ad quem for their presence in the programming language
literature, suggesting that the emergence of the concept of type in computer
science is relatively independent from the logical tradition, until the
Curry-Howard isomorphism will make an explicit bridge between them.Comment: History and Philosophy of Computing, HAPOC 2015. To appear in LNC
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