Compilation platform

Research challenge

There are overwhelming technical and non-technical motivations for supporting a common compilation platform, and for selecting GCC as this reference platform. More and more academic and industrial groups embrace GCC for research, training and production. This success exacerbates the need for support and coordination of the exchange and mutual-interest developments into the platform. It also requires significant and long-term commitment on applied research to transfer research prototypes into production branches of the compiler.

Nevertheless, GCC is not (currently at least) a Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler, and it only provides incomplete support for managed languages. A strong motivation for JIT-compilation in HiPEAC is the convergence of processor virtualization and performance portability objectives, in the context of heterogeneous multicores and hardware accelerators. There is a clear need for delayed code generation and optimization, taking into account dynamic information (including system load, library calling context, data sets), and the exact target architecture instance. The compilation platform cluster is currently working on the selection of a platform to work in this area, aiming for maximal synergy with the GCC platform; this is a joint activity with the Virtualization and Adaptive Compilation clusters. Important: we are looking for a compiler engineer/postdoc to contribute to the coordination, research and development activities of the cluster.

Recent and Upcoming Cluster Events

• GROW'10: the next GCC Research Opportunities Workshop will be organized by Dorit Nuzman and Grigori Fursin, January 2010, Pisa, Italy (associated with HiPEAC'10).
• SSA Seminar: celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Static Single Assignment form, April 27-30, Autrans, France.
  
• GROW'09: the GCC Research Opportunities Workshop, January 25, Paphos, Cyprus (associated with HiPEAC'09).
     

News

• We are looking for a new cluster engineer/postdoc, starting in May 2009 or later. Please send applications to Ayal Zaks and Albert Cohen.
• 2009.05.27. Information about the 5th meeting in Munich.
• 2009.01.24. Information about the 4th meeting in Paphos.
• 2008.11.28. Information about the 3rd meeting in Paris.
• 2008.06.02. Information about the 2nd meeting in Barcelona.
• 2008.02.01. Welcome to the HiPEAC Compilation Platform Cluster!
  Please subscribe (click on "Request subscription" on the right-side "Compilation platform" block) if you are willing to participate to the cluster activities.
• 2008.01.31. Kickoff meeting information.

Initial research topics

• Integrate iterative and machine-learning compilation into a production environment.
• Extend the SSA-based internal representation to support optimization of parallel programs.
• Explore compiler support for transactional memory and thread-level speculation.
• Support whole-program and link-time optimization on a high-level representation.
• Design and implement a portable performance model for the multi-core era.

Planned mutualization and transfer activities

• GCC as a common research platform: HiPEAC development branch.
• Build an API to plug research tools into GCC.
• Work with the GCC community.
• Use GCC as a powerful dissemination vehicle of HiPEAC compiler research.

Research and actions

• Portal for ongoing, planned and proposed collaborations.

People in charge

• Coordinators: Albert Cohen, INRIA Saclay, and Ayal Zaks, IBM Haifa