Exploiting the Parallelism Exposed by Partial Evaluation

We describe the key role played by partial evaluation in the Supercomputing Toolkit, a parallel computing system for scientific applications that effectively exploits the vast amount of parallelism exposed by partial evaluation. The Supercomputing Toolkit parallel processor and its associated partial evaluation-based compiler have been used extensively by scientists at MIT, and have made possible recent results in astrophysics showing that the motion of the planets in our solar system is chaotically unstable

Partial Evaluation for Scientific Computing: The Supercomputer Toolkit Experience

We describe the key role played by partial evaluation in the Supercomputer Toolkit, a parallel computing system for scientific applications that effectively exploits the vast amount of parallelism exposed by partial evaluation. The Supercomputer Toolkit parallel processor and its associated partial evaluation-based compiler have been used extensively by scientists at M.I.T., and have made possible recent results in astrophysics showing that the motion of the planets in our solar system is chaotically unstable

A Parallelizing Compiler Based on Partial Evaluation

We constructed a parallelizing compiler that utilizes partial evaluation to achieve efficient parallel object code from very high-level data independent source programs. On several important scientific applications, the compiler attains parallel performance equivalent to or better than the best observed results from the manual restructuring of code. This is the first attempt to capitalize on partial evaluation's ability to expose low-level parallelism. New static scheduling techniques are used to utilize the fine-grained parallelism of the computations. The compiler maps the computation graph resulting from partial evaluation onto the Supercomputer Toolkit, an eight VLIW processor parallel computer

Exploiting the Parallelism Exposed by Partial Evaluation

We describe an approach to parallel compilation that seeks to harness the vast amount of fine-grain parallelism that is exposed through partial evaluation of numerically-intensive scientific programs. We have constructed a compiler for the Supercomputer Toolkit parallel processor that uses partial evaluation to break down data abstractions and program structure, producing huge basic blocks that contain large amounts of fine-grain parallelism. We show that this fine-grain prarllelism can be effectively utilized even on coarse-grain parallel architectures by selectively grouping operations together so as to adjust the parallelism grain-size to match the inter-processor communication capabilities of the target architecture

MAR-CPS: Measurable Augmented Reality for Prototyping Cyber-Physical Systems

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) refer to engineering platforms that rely on the inte- gration of physical systems with control, computation, and communication technologies. Autonomous vehicles are instances of CPSs that are rapidly growing with applications in many domains. Due to the integration of physical systems with computational sens- ing, planning, and learning in CPSs, hardware-in-the-loop experiments are an essential step for transitioning from simulations to real-world experiments. This paper proposes an architecture for rapid prototyping of CPSs that has been developed in the Aerospace Controls Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This system, referred to as MAR-CPS (Measurable Augmented Reality for Prototyping Cyber-Physical Systems), includes physical vehicles and sensors, a motion capture technology, a projection system, and a communication network. The role of the projection system is to augment a physical laboratory space with 1) autonomous vehicles' beliefs and 2) a simulated mission environ- ment, which in turn will be measured by physical sensors on the vehicles. The main focus of this method is on rapid design of planning, perception, and learning algorithms for au- tonomous single-agent or multi-agent systems. Moreover, the proposed architecture allows researchers to project a simulated counterpart of outdoor environments in a controlled, indoor space, which can be crucial when testing in outdoor environments is disfavored due to safety, regulatory, or monetary concerns. We discuss the issues related to the design and implementation of MAR-CPS and demonstrate its real-time behavior in a variety of problems in autonomy, such as motion planning, multi-robot coordination, and learning spatio-temporal fields.Boeing Compan

Practical partial evaluation

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1995.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 41-42).by Rajeev Surati.M.S

A Parallelizing Compiler Based on Partial Evaluation

This thesis demonstrates a compiler that uses partial evaluation to achieve outstandingly efficient parallel object code from very high-level source programs. The source programs are ordinary Scheme numerical programs, written abstractly, with no attempt to structure them for parallel execution. The compiler identifies and extracts parallelism completely automatically; nevertheless, it achieves speedups equivalent to or better than the best observed results achieved by previous supercomputer compilers that require manual restructuring of code. This thesis represents one of the first attempts to capitalize on partial evaluation's ability to expose low-level parallelism. To demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach, we targeted the compiler for the Supercomputer Toolkit, a parallel machine with eight VLIW processors. Experimental results on integration of the gravitational n-body problem show that the compiler, generating code for 8 processors, achieves a factor of 6.2 speedup over..

Practical Partial Evaluation

Partial evaluation techniques have been known to yield order of magnitude speedups of real-world applications. Despite this tremendous potential, partial evaluators are rarely put to practical use. This is primarily because it is not easy for users to extend partial evaluators to work on their specific applications. This thesis describes Blitzkrieg, a user-extensible online partial evaluator designed to make partial evaluation more accessible to a wider class of users and applications. Blitzkrieg uses an object system to simplify the implementation of the partial evaluation system and to allow users to easily express their own domain-specific optimizations. The viability of Blitzkrieg is shown by applying it to the Stormer integrator on a 6-body problem (achieving a factor of 610 speedup) and the Runge-Kutta integrator on the same problem (a factor of 365.5 speedup). In addition, the flexibility of the approach is demonstrated by applying Blitzkrieg to handle port input programs, ac..

Scalable self-calibrating display technology for seamless large-scale displays

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, February 1999."January 1999."Includes bibliographical references (leaves 66-67).We present techniques for combining high-performance computing with feedback to enable the correction of imperfections in the alignment, optical system, and fabrication of very high-resolution display devices. The key idea relies on the measurement of relative alignment, rotation, optical distortion, and intensity gradients of an aggregated set of low-cost image display devices using a precision low cost reference. Use of the reference allows the construction of a locally correct map relating the coordinate system of the aggregate display to the coordinate systems of the individual projectors composing the display. This idea provides a new technology for linearly scalable, bright, seamless, high-resolution large-scale self-calibrating displays (seamless video walls). Such a large-scale display was constructed using the techniques described in this dissertation. Low-cost computation coupled with feedback is used to provide the precision necessary to create these displays. Digital photogrammetry and digital image warping techniques are used to make a single seamless image appear across the aggregated projection displays. The following techniques are used to improve the display quality: ** Anti-alias filtering to improve the display of high frequency in images; ** Limiting the range of displayed intensities to ones that can be displayed uniformly across all the projectors; and ** Applying intensity smoothing functions to the regions of the image that are projected in the overlapping region. These functions smoothly and gradually transition the projection among the projectors. The resultant systems demonstrate the viability of the approach by succeeding where other approaches have failed; it makes huge seamless video walls a reality.by Rajeev J. Surati.Ph.D