[PRL] Keith Cooper @ Harvard 10/16

[Matthias Felleisen]

I recomend Keith's work. He has teamed up with an interesting 
AI/embedded
systems person who has changed directions for Keith quite a bit. This 
is the
first truly novel ideas in compilers that I have seen in 15 years -- 
and you may
want to know that our department at Rice used to receive letters 
addressed
to "dear Department of Compiler Science". -- Matthias


On Thursday, September 25, 2003, at 12:25 PM, Mitchell Wand wrote:

> Title:     Keith Cooper, Rice University
>
> Date:      October 16, 2003
>
> Old Location:
>
> New Location: Maxwell Dworkin G125, (Ice Cream at 3:30PM - Maxwell
> Dworkin 2nd Floor Lounge Area)
>
> Time:      4 p.m. - 5 p.m.
>
> Harvard University
> 33 Oxford St.,
> Cambridge, MA 02138
> tel: (617) 496-1440  fax: (617) 495-9837
>
> Colloquium
>
> Rethinking Compiler Structure
>
>
>   	
> Abstract
>
> For more than forty years, we have built compilers that follow a
> simple structural model: they apply a fixed set of passes to every
> program.  A typical compiler has a handful of optimization levels that
> add extra passes into the process. This approach has allowed us to
> make progress on compilation and optimization.  It has allowed us to
> build and debug compilers.  However, it has not placed us in a
> position where we can deliver high-quality compilers in a timely
> fashion. Despite forty years of research on optimization and code
> quality, we still have trouble producing compilers that generate
> excellent code for new architectures and new applications.
>
> One area that research has largely avoided is the structure of the
> compilers that we build.  Modern compilers are organized along the
> same basic lines that were used in the first Fortran compiler, in the
> late 1950s.  The time has come to fundamentally rethink the way that
> we organize and execute optimizing compilers.  In our research, we are
> building and evaluating an adaptive compiler.  This compiler changes
> its behavior in response to both the application and the target
> machine. It uses a simple feedback mechanism in an attempt to minimize
> an explicit objective function, such as execution time or code size.
>
> This talk will present preliminary results from some large scale
> experiments with our prototype system. It will discuss some of the
> engineering challenges that adaptivity presents. It will discuss the
> impact that our results should have on the way that we build and
> structure compilers.  It will suggest directions for future research
> in adaptive compilation.
>
> This talk should be accessible to a broad audience.
>
> Host:  Professor Michael Smith
>
>
> Calendar URL
> - ------------
> http://www.fas.harvard.edu/
>
> ***********************************************************
>
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