Aliasing complicates both formal and informal reasoning and is a particular problem in object-oriented languages, where variables denote references to objects rather than object values. Researchers have proposed various approaches to the aliasing problem in object-oriented languages, but all use reference semantics to reason about programs. This thesis describes the design and implementation of Tako—a Java-like language that facilitates value semantics by incorporating alias-avoidance. The thesis describes a non-trivial application developed in the Tako language and discusses some of the object-oriented programming paradigm shifts involved in translating that application from Java to Tako. It introduces a proof rule for procedure calls that uses value semantics and accounts for both repeated arguments and subtyping. / Master of Science

The world of high-performance computing has shifted from increasing single-core performance to extracting performance from heterogeneous multi- and many-core processors due to the power, memory and instruction-level parallelism walls. All trends point towards increased processor heterogeneity as a means for increasing application performance, from smartphones to servers. These various architectures are designed for different types of applications — traditional "big" CPUs (like the Intel Xeon) are optimized for low latency while other architectures (such as the NVidia Tesla K20x) are optimized for high-throughput. These architectures have different tradeoffs and different performance profiles, meaning fantastic performance gains for the right types of applications. However applications that are ill-suited for a given architecture may experience significant slowdown; therefore, it is imperative that applications are scheduled onto the correct processor. In order to perform this scheduling, applications must be analyzed to determine their execution characteristics. Traditionally this application-to-hardware mapping was determined statically by the programmer. However, this requires intimate knowledge of the application and underlying architecture, and precludes load-balancing by the system. We demonstrate and empirically evaluate a system for automatically scheduling compute kernels by extracting program characteristics and applying machine learning techniques. We develop a machine learning process that is system-agnostic, and works for a variety of contexts (e.g. embedded, desktop/workstation, server). Finally, we perform scheduling in a workload-aware and workload-adaptive manner for these compute kernels. / Master of Science

As the demand for ever increasingly powerful machines continues, new architectures are sought to be the next route of breaking past the brick wall that currently stagnates the performance growth of modern multi-core CPUs. Due to physical limitations, scaling single-core performance any further is no longer possible, giving rise to modern multi-cores. However, the brick wall is now limiting the scaling of general-purpose multi-cores. Heterogeneous-core CPUs have the potential to continue scaling by reducing power consumption through exploitation of specialized and simple cores within the same chip. Heterogeneous-core CPUs join fundamentally different processors each which their own peculiar features, i.e., fast execution time, improved power efficiency, etc; enabling the building of versatile computing systems. To make heterogeneous platforms permeate the computer market, the next hurdle to overcome is the ability to provide a familiar programming model and environment such that developers do not have to focus on platform details. Nevertheless, heterogeneous platforms integrate processors with diverse characteristics and potentially a different Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), which exacerbate the complexity of the software. A brave few have begun to tread down the heterogeneous-ISA path, hoping to prove that this avenue will yield the next generation of super computers. However, many unforeseen obstacles have yet to be discovered. With this new challenge comes the clear need for efficient, developer-friendly, adaptable system software to support the efforts of making heterogeneous-ISA the golden standard for future high-performance and general-purpose computing. To foster rapid development of this technology, it is imperative to put the proper tools into the hands of developers, such as application and architecture profiling engines, in order to realize the best heterogeneous-ISA platform possible with available technology. In addition, it would be in the best interest to create tools to be as "timeless" as possible to expose fundamental concepts industry could benefit from and adopt in future designs. We demonstrate the feasibility of a compiler framework and runtime for an existing heterogeneous-ISA operating system (Popcorn Linux) for automatically scheduling compute blocks within an application on a given heterogeneous-ISA high-performance platform (in our case a platform built with Intel Xeon - Xeon Phi). With the introduced Profiler, Partitioner, and Runtime support, we prove to be able to automatically exploit the heterogeneity in an overlapping-ISA platform, being faster than native execution and other parallelism programming models. Empirically evaluating our compiler framework, we show that application execution on Popcorn Linux can be up to 52% faster than the most performant native execution for Xeon or Xeon Phi. Using our compiler framework relieves the developer from manual scheduling and porting of applications, requiring only a single profiling run per application. / Master of Science

The use of hardware accelerators in high-performance computing has grown increasingly prevalent, particularly due to the growth of graphics processing units (GPUs) as general-purpose (GPGPU) accelerators. Much of this growth has been driven by NVIDIA's CUDA ecosystem for developing GPGPU applications on NVIDIA hardware. However, with the increasing diversity of GPUs (including those from AMD, ARM, and Qualcomm), OpenCL has emerged as an open and vendor-agnostic environment for programming GPUs as well as other parallel computing devices such as the CPU (central processing unit), APU (accelerated processing unit), FPGA (field programmable gate array), and DSP (digital signal processor). The above, coupled with the broader array of devices supporting OpenCL and the significant conceptual and syntactic overlap between CUDA and OpenCL, motivated the creation of a CUDA-to-OpenCL source-to-source translator. However, there exist sufficient differences that make the translation non-trivial, providing practical limitations to both manual and automatic translation efforts. In this thesis, the performance, coverage, and reliability of a prototype CUDA-to-OpenCL source translator are addressed via extensive profiling of a large body of sample CUDA applications. An analysis of the sample body of applications is provided, which identifies and characterizes general CUDA source constructs and programming practices that obstruct our translation efforts. This characterization then led to more robust support for the translator, followed by an evaluation that demonstrated the performance of our automatically-translated OpenCL is on par with the original CUDA for a subset of sample applications when executed on the same NVIDIA device. / Master of Science

Code transformation is widely used in programming. Most developers are familiar with using a preprocessor to perform syntactic transformations (symbol substitution and macro expansion). However, it is often necessary to perform more complex transformations using semantic information contained in the source code. In this thesis, we developed EXTRACT; a general-purpose code transformation language. Using EXTRACT, it is possible to specify, in a modular and extensible manner, a variety of transformations on Java code such as insertion, removal, and restructuring. In support of this, we also developed JPath, a path language for identifying portions of Java source code. Combined, these two technologies make it possible to identify source code that is to be transformed and then specify how that code is to be transformed. We evaluate our technology using three case studies: a type name qualifier which transforms Java class names into fully-qualified class names; a contract checker which enforces pre- and post-conditions across behavioral subtypes; and a code obfuscator which mangles the names of a class's methods and fields such that they cannot be understood by a human, without breaking the semantic content of the class.

Distributed-memory machines offer a very high level of performance, flexibility and scalability. But the memory organization of this kind of machine determines that processes on different processors must communicate explicitly by sending and receiving messages. As a result, the programmer faces the enormously difficult task of detailed planning of algorithm-irrelevant, low-level communication issues. This level of programming resembles writing assembly programs for a sequential machine. ACE is a message-passing language with abstract communication statements. It was defined by Dr. Jingke Li at Portland State University. The communication in ACE is still explicit, but it is abstracted to a higher level. The abstraction can help balance the needs of ease of programming and high performance. This thesis discusses how those high-level communication abstractions can be transformed into low-level communication routines. It presents the design and implementation of a compiler that transforms an ACE program into a C program with low-level communication routines. The compiler is implemented for the Intel iPSC/2 hypercube multiprocessor machine. Compared to their low-level counterparts, ACE programs are easier to write and are more understandable. Compared to their high level counterparts, more efficient code can be generated since the communication information is expressed explicitly in ACE and the compiler itself is much less complex. ACE also enables the users to fine tune some critical communication segments. Some well known parallel algorithms written in ACE are compiled by the compiler as examples, and experimental results of their performance are included.

<p>Given the nature of client-server applications, most use some freeform interface, like web forms, to collect user input. The main difficulty with this approach is that all parameters obtained in this fashion need to be validated and normalized to protect the application from invalid entries. This is the problem addressed here: how to take client input and preprocess it before passing the data to a back-end, which concentrates on business logic. The method of implementation is a rule engine that uses Groovy internal domain-specific language (DSL) for specifying input requirements. We will justify why the DSL is a good fit for a validation rule engine, describe existing techniques used in this area and comprehensively address the related issues of accidental complexity, security, and user experience.</p> / Master of Science (MSc)

Recent years have witnessed the emergence of microprocessors that are embedded within a plethora of devices used in everyday life. Embedded architectures are customized through a meticulous and time consuming design process to satisfy stringent constraints with respect to performance, area, power, and cost. In embedded systems, the cost of the memory hierarchy limits its ability to play as central a role. This is due to stringent constraints that fundamentally limit the physical size and complexity of the memory system. Ultimately, application developers and system engineers are charged with the heavy burden of reducing the memory requirements of an application. This thesis offers the intriguing possibility that compilers can play a significant role in the automatic design space exploration and optimization of embedded memory systems. This insight is founded upon a new analytical model and novel compiler optimizations that are specifically designed to increase the synergy between the processor and the memory system. The analytical models serve to characterize intrinsic program properties, quantify the impact of compiler optimizations on the memory systems, and provide deep insight into the trade-offs that affect memory system design.

<p dir="ltr">Proof assistants based on dependent types are powerful tools for building certified software. In order to verify programs written in a different language, however, a representation of those programs in the proof assistant is required. When that language is sufficiently similar to that of the proof assistant, one solution is to use a <i>shallow embedding</i> to directly encode source programs as programs in the proof assistant. One challenge with this approach is ensuring that any semantic gaps between the two languages are accounted for. In this thesis, we present <i>GSet</i>, a mixed embedding that bridges the gap between OCaml GADTs and inductive datatypes in Coq. This embedding retains the rich typing information of GADTs while also allowing pattern matching with impossible branches to be translated without additional axioms. We formalize this with GADTml, a minimal calculus that captures GADTs in OCaml, and gCIC, an impredicative variant of the Calculus of Inductive Constructions. Furthermore, we present the translation algorithm between GADTml and gCIC, together with a proof of the soundness of this translation. We have integrated this technique into coq-of-ocaml, a tool for automatically translating OCaml programs into Coq. Finally, we demonstrate the feasibility of our approach by using our enhanced version of coq-of-ocaml, to translate a portion of the Tezos code base into Coq.</p>

The most important programming languages are the ones that manage to capitalize on emerging frontiers in computing. Although JavaScript started its life as a toy language, the explosive growth of the web since 1995 and the invention of the web application have transformed the language’s syntax, potential and importance. JavaScript today is powerful and expressive. But is the language good enough to power the future of the web? How does the messy political past of JavaScript affect web development today, and how will it affect web development in the future? The paper first examines the political history of JavaScript from its origins at Netscape through today. Then a case study of pure JavaScript web development using the NodeJS and AngularJS is presented and analyzed. Finally, several potential paths forward for the language are considered, including a discussion and analysis of Microsoft’s TypeScript, Mozilla’s ASM.js and Google’s Dart.