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acm
2002 ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on
Partial Evaluation and Semantics-Based Program Manipulation (PEPM'02)
Portland, Oregon, USA, January 14-15, 2002
Preceding POPL'02

Call for Papers

The PEPM'02 workshop will bring together researchers working in the areas of semantics-based program manipulation, partial evaluation, and program generation. The workshop focuses on techniques, supporting theory, and applications of the analysis and manipulation of programs. Technical topics include, but are not limited to:

Original results that bear on these and related topics are solicited. Papers investigating novel uses and applications of program manipulation in the broadest sense are especially encouraged. Authors concerned about the appropriateness of a topic are welcome to consult with the program chair prior to submission.

Submission Information

SUBMISSION DEADLINE EXPIRED

Papers should be submitted electronically via the workshop's Web page. Exceptionally, submissions may be emailed to the program chair: thiemann@uni-freiburg.de. Acceptable formats are PostScript or PDF, viewable by gv. Submissions should not exceed 5000 words, excluding bibliography and figures. Excessively long submissions may be rejected outright.

Submitted papers will be judged on the basis of significance, relevance, correctness, originality, and clarity. They should include a clear identification of what has been accomplished and why it is significant. They must describe work that has not previously been published in a major forum. Authors must indicate if a closely related paper is also being considered for another conference or journal.

Proceedings will be published with ACM Press. A special issue of the journal Higher-Order and Symbolic Computation is planned afterwards.

Important Dates

Submission: 8 October 2001
Notification: 12 November 2001
Final papers: 26 November 2001

Invited Talks

Paul Hovland, Argonne National Laboratory

Title:
Implementation of Automatic Differentiation Tools
Authors:
Christian Bischof, Paul Hovland, Boyana Norris
Abstract:
Automatic differentiation is a semantic transformation that applies the rules of differential calculus to source code. It thus transforms a computer program that computes a mathematical function into a program that computes the function and its derivatives. Derivatives play an important role in a wide variety of scientific computing applications, including optimization, solution of nonlinear equations, sensitivity analysis, and nonlinear inverse problems. We describe a simple component architecture for developing tools for automatic differentiation and other mathematically oriented semantic transformations of scientific software. This architecture consists of a compiler-based, language-specific front-end for source transformation, loosely coupled with one or more language-independent ``plug-in'' transformation modules. The coupling mechanism between the front-end and transformation modules is provided by the XML Abstract Interface Form (XAIF). XAIF provides an abstract, language-independent representation of language constructs common in imperative languages, such as C and Fortran. We describe the use of this architecture in constructing tools for automatic differentiation of Fortran 77 and ANSI C, and we discuss how access to compiler optimization techniques can enable more efficient derivative augmentation.

Craig Chambers, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington

Title:
Staged Compilation
Abstract:
Traditional compilers compile and optimize files separately, making worst-case assumptions about the program context in which a file is to be linked. More aggressive compilation architectures perform cross-file interprocedural or whole-program analyses, potentially producing much faster programs but substantially increasing the cost of compilation. Even more radical are systems that perform all compilation and optimization at run-time: such systems can optimize programs based on run-time program and system properties as well as static whole-program properties. However, run-time compilers (also called dynamic compilers or just-in-time compilers) suffer under severe constraints on allowable compilation time, since any time spent compiling steals from time spent running the program. None of these compilation models dominates the others: each has unique strengths and weaknesses not present in the other models.
 
We are developing a new, staged compilation model which strives to combine high run-time code quality with low compilation overhead. Compilation is organized as a series of stages, with stages corresponding to, for example, separate compilation, library linking, program linking, and run-time execution. Any given optimization can be performed at any of these stages; to reduce compilation time while maintaining high effectiveness, an optimization should be performed at the earliest stage that provides the necessary program context information to carry out the optimization effectively. Moreover, a single optimization can itself be spread across multiple stages, with earlier stages performing preplanning work that enables the final stage to complete the optimization quickly. In this way, we hope to produce highly optimized programs, nearly as good as what could be done with a purely run-time compiler that had an unconstrained compilation time budget, but at a much more practical compile time cost.
 
We are building the Whirlwind optimizing compiler as the concrete embodiment of this staged compilation model, initially targeting object-oriented languages. A key component of Whirlwind is a set of techniques for automatically constructing staged compilers from traditional unstaged compilers, including aggressive applications of specialization and other partial evaluation technology.

Program and Registration

Program Committee

Chair: Peter Thiemann, Universität Freiburg, Germany. E-mail: thiemann@uni-freiburg.de

Members:

Peter Thiemann
Last modified: Mon Dec 3 14:49:58 CET 2001