Compiling Scala for Performance

This thesis proposes a novel way of performing type checking, whose results are incremental, depending on the provided local information. This new way of type checking is called co-contextual, where all context information of expressions, methods, classes, etc., is removed. Instead, we introduce corresponding structures using requirements. Standard type systems are translated to the co-contextual ones systematically using dualism as technique. Type systems play an important role to prevent execution errors from occurring during runtime. They are used to check programs statically for potential errors. Programs are type checked against a given set of rules. Depending on these rules programs are well-typed or not. The set of these rules is called typing rules. Each type rule associates types to the constructs of a program given a certain context. There can be different forms of contexts, depending on the features of the typed programming language. Functional languages use a typing context of variables and their types; object-oriented (OO) languages use additional class tables. Class tables are used for example to ensure that method and class declarations are well-typed. Type checking is performed top-down. While traversing the syntax tree of a program, typing contexts are extended with information on the expressions and their types. In case of OO, class tables are extended with clauses from class declarations, including the class members, i.e., fields, methods, or constructors. Contexts are passed through the nodes of the syntax tree in order to coordinate type checking between them. Therefore, while traversing the syntax tree top-down, the type checker creates dependencies between otherwise independent subexpressions. This way, it inhibits incrementalization and parallelization of type checking. That is, a change to a node of the syntax tree would require to redo the type check of the whole syntax tree. In this thesis a novel formulation of type systems is proposed, in order to remove dependencies between subexpressions. We propose a co-contextual formulation of typing rules that depends only on the local program constructs, e.g., expressions, methods, classes. The co-contextual typing rules have as conclusion a type and sets of requirements. That is, contexts and class tables are replaced by the dual concept of context and class table requirements. In addition, operations on contexts and class tables are replaced by new dual operations on requirements. The co-contextual type checker traverses a syntax tree bottom-up and merges context requirements of independently checked subexpressions. We describe a method for systematically constructing a co-contextual formulation of type rules from a regular context-based formulation and we show how co-contextual type rules give rise to incremental type checking. We derive co-contextual type checkers for functional and OO languages. As a representative of functional languages we consider PCF and extensions of it: records, parametric polymorphism, structural subtyping and let-polymorphism. Also, we investigate featherweight java (FJ) as the basis of OO languages and extensions of it: method overloading and generics. We build a1 co-contextual type checker for FJ enabling key features of OO languages: subtype polymorphism, nominal typing and implementation inheritance. The dualism between the co-contextual and contextual type systems preserves the correctness of the contextual calculus. That is, we prove the correctness of the co-contextual calculus via the equivalence between contextual type rules and their co-contextual formulations. We implemented an incremental type checker for PCF along with a performance evaluation showing that co-contextual type checking has performance comparable to standard context-based type checking, and incrementalization can improve performance significantly. Regarding FJ, we implemented a co-contextual type checker with incrementalization and compared its performance against javac on a number of realistic programs. Our performance evaluation shows significant speedups for the co-contextual type checker with incrementalization in comparison to javac.

While GPUs are increasingly popular for high-performance computing, optimizing the performance of GPU programs is a time-consuming and non-trivial process in general. This complexity stems from the low abstraction level of standard GPU programming models such as CUDA and OpenCL: programmers are required to orchestrate low-level operations in order to exploit the full capability of GPUs. In terms of software productivity and portability, a more attractive approach would be to facilitate GPU programming by providing high-level abstractions for expressing parallel algorithms.OpenMP is a directive-based shared memory parallel programming model and has been widely used for many years. From OpenMP 4.0 onwards, GPU platforms are supported by extending OpenMP's high-level parallel abstractions with accelerator programming. This extension allows programmers to write GPU programs in standard C/C++ or Fortran languages, without exposing too many details of GPU architectures.However, such high-level parallel programming strategies generally impose additional program optimizations on compilers, which could result in lower performance than fully hand-tuned code with low-level programming models. To study potential performance improvements by compiling and optimizing high-level GPU programs, in this paper, we 1) evaluate a set of OpenMP 4.× benchmarks on an IBM POWER8 and NVIDIA Tesla GPU platform and 2) conduct a comparable performance analysis among hand-written CUDA and automatically-generated GPU programs by the IBM XL and clang/LLVM compilers.

Scala is a new programming language developed at EPFL and incorporating the most important concepts of object-oriented and functional languages. It aims at integrating well with the Java and .NET platforms: their respective libraries are accessible without glue code, and the compiler can produce programs for both virtual machines. This thesis focuses on the compilation of two important concepts of Scala : mixin inheritance and run time types. The compilation techniques are presented in the context of the Java virtual machine, but could be adapted easily to other similar environments. Mixin inheritance is a relatively recent form of inheritance, offering new capabilities compared to single inheritance, without the complexity of multiple inheritance. We propose two implementation techniques for mixin inheritance: code copying and delegation. The implementation used in the Scala compiler is then presented and justified. Run time types make it possible for a program to examine the type of its values during execution. This possibility is interesting in itself, offering new capabilities to the programmer. Furthermore, run time types are also required to implement other high level concepts, like pattern matching, type-safe serialisation and reflection. We propose an implementation technique based on the representation of types as values, and show how to use the run time types of the underlying virtual machine to implement those of Scala. The techniques presented in this thesis have been implemented in our Scala compiler, scalac. This enabled us to evaluate these techniques, in particular their impact on the performances of programs. This evaluation was performed on several real, non-trivial programs.

In molecular programming, the Chemical Reaction Network model is often used to describe systems of interacting molecules. This model can describe either real systems, allowing us to analyze and determine their computational function; or describe hypothetical systems, with known computational function but perhaps no known physical example. One significant breakthrough in the field is that any Chemical Reaction Network can be approximated by a system using DNA Strand Displacement mechanisms. This allows the Chemical Reaction Network model to be treated like a programming language, where programs can be written in the abstract and then compiled into physical molecules. Given a programming language and a proof-of-concept compiler, one would want to take the compiler from the proof-of-concept stage into a more reliable, more systematic, and better understood process. This thesis is made up of my contributions to that effort. First, given a programming language and a compiler, it would be useful to formally verify that the compiler is correct. My collaborators, Qing Dong and Erik Winfree, and I defined a Chemical Reaction Network-specific form of bisimulation equivalence, which can compare two such networks and verify that one is (or is not) a correct implementation of the other. For example, the compiler-produced DNA circuit can be verified as an implementation of its abstract program, although this is not the only possible use. After defining this concept of equivalence, we show that it can be checked by algorithm; although various parts of the problem are NP-complete or PSPACE-complete, we give algorithms that meet these lower bounds. We also prove a number of interesting properties of Chemical Reaction Network bisimulation equivalence, including transitivity and modularity properties which are particularly useful for stepwise checking of large systems. We further extend this bisimulation method to linear Polymer Reaction Networks, a strictly more powerful abstraction which has been occasionally used in molecular programming. Again we prove complexity hardness results, which in this case are as expected uncomputable in the general case; however, many practical systems can still be verified, and we give one such example. Finally, we use bisimulation to identify a class of single-locus networks that are practical to implement. Thus we show a method of verification which can simplify use of the above-mentioned compiler by proving general statements of correctness about its results. Second, given a programming language and a concept of compiling it, it would be useful to optimize the result of the compilation. One particular area of optimization is the number of DNA strands per prepared complex; some experiments suggest that systems with no more than 2 strands per complex are more robust. Lulu Qian and I developed some proposed DNA Strand Displacement schemes for general Chemical Reaction Network implementations with no more than 2 strands per complex, and a number of other desirable properties. Meanwhile, having been shown to be useful for many reasons, the mechanisms of DNA Strand Displacement have recently been formalized, abstracted, and analyzed. I show that this formalization, combined with the bisimulation methods above, can prove various statements about the limits of DNA Strand Displacement systems. For example, a set of desirable conditions including the 2-strand limit cannot be achieved by any general Chemical Reaction Network implementation scheme. I also observe that two of the new schemes we discovered, each meeting all but one condition of the impossible set, were found in the process of coming up with this proof. I thus argue that through formalization of DNA Strand Displacement we can have a more systematic method of finding and designing molecular programs, and of knowing when the programs we want do not exist.

To leverage modern hardware platforms to their fullest, more and more database systems embrace compilation of query plans to native code. In the research community, there is an ongoing debate about the best way to architect such query compilers. This is perceived to be a difficult task, requiring techniques fundamentally different from traditional interpreted query execution. In this dissertation, we contribute to this discussion by drawing attention to an old but underappreciated idea known as Futamura projections, which fundamentally link interpreters and compilers. Guided by this idea, we demonstrate that efficient query compilation can actually be very simple, using techniques that are no more difficult than writing a query interpreter in a high-level language. We first develop LB2: a high-level query compiler implemented in this style that is competitive with the best compiled query engines both in sequential and parallel execution on the standard TPC-H benchmark. Query engines process a variety of data types and structures including text, spatial, graphs, etc. Several spatial and graph engines are implemented as extensions to relational query engines to leverage optimized memory, storage, and evaluation. Still, the performance of these extensions is often stymied by the interpretive nature of the underlying data management, generic data structures, and the need to execute domain-specific external libraries. On that basis, compiling spatial and graph queries to native code is a desirable avenue to mitigate existing limitations and improve performance. To support compiling spatial queries, we extend the LB2 main-memory query compiler with spatial predicates, indexing structures, and spatial operators. To support compiling graph queries, we extend LB2 with graph data structures and operators. The spatial extension matches the performance of hand-written code and outperforms relational query engines and map-reduce extensions. Similarly, the graph extension matches, and sometimes outperforms, low-level graph engines.

In this thesis, we explore techniques for the development and verification of programs in a high-level, expressive, and safe programming language. Our programs can express problems over unbounded domains and over recursive and mutable data structures. We present an implementation language flexible enough to build interesting and useful systems. We mostly maintain a core shared language for the specifications and the implementation, with only a few extensions specific to expressing the specifications. Extensions of the core shared language include imperative features with state and side effects, which help when implementing efficient systems. Our language is a subset of the Scala programming language. Once verified, programs can be compiled and executed using the existing Scala tools. We present algorithms for verifying programs written in this language. We take a layer-based approach, where we reduce, at each step, the program to an equivalent program in a simpler language. We first purify functions by transforming away mutations into explicit return types in the functions' signatures. This step rewrites all mutations of data structures into cloning operations. We then translate local state into a purely functional code, hence eliminating all traces of imperative programming. The final language is a functional subset of Scala, on which we apply verification. We integrate our pipeline of translations into Leon, a verifier for Scala. We verify the core functional language by using an algorithm already developed inside Leon. The program is encoded into equivalent first-order logic formulas over a combination of theories and recursive functions. The formulas are eventually discharged to an external SMT solver. We extend this core language and the solving algorithm with support for both infinite-precision integers and bit-vectors. The algorithm takes into account the semantics gap between the two domains, and the programmer is ultimately responsible to use the proper type to represent the data. We build a reusable interface for SMT-LIB that enables us to swap solvers transparently in order to validate the formulas emitted by Leon. We experiment with writing solvers in Scala; they could offer both a better and safer integration with the rest of the system. We evaluate the cost of using a higher-order language to implement such solvers, traditionally written in C/C++. Finally, we experiment with the system by building fully working and verified applications. We rely on the intersection of many features including higher-order functions, mutable data structures, recursive functions, and nondeterministic environment dependencies, to build concise and verified applications.

COBOL language has undergone three major revisions since its inception in 1959. The first revision came in 1968, the second in 1974, and the third in 1985. These revisions have enabled the language to keep up with the demands of the changing times. The major impact of the new standard is to enhance structured design capabilities of the language and eliminate aspects of the language that gave room for poor design. In this paper we concentrate on the enhancements of the language. We also look into the commonality of features in COBOL with other high-level languages. Several features of the language are tested on simulated problem areas. The programs are then run using three different compilers. These are the IBM COBOL OS/VS 2--4 compiler on an IBM mainframe computer, the VAX COBOL 4. 0 compiler, and the RM COBOL compiler on a micro. the IBM COBOL is based on the 1974 standard and the other two are based on the 1985 standard. This approach enables us to see the extra effort that is needed for the '74 compiler to simulate an '85 compiler feature. This study also measures the program length, program readability, and the speed of execution.

First-order languages based on rewrite rules share many features with functional languages, but one difference is that matching and rewriting can be made much more expressive and powerful by incorp...

Parametric polymorphism enables code reuse and type safety. Underneath the uniform interface exposed to programmers, however, its low level implementation has to cope with inherently non-uniform data: value types of different sizes and semantics (bytes, integers, floating point numbers) and reference types (pointers to heap objects). On the Java Virtual Machine, parametric polymorphism is currently translated to bytecode using two competing approaches: homogeneous and heterogeneous. Homogeneous translation requires boxing, and thus introduces indirect access delays. Heterogeneous translation duplicates and adapts code for each value type individually, producing more bytecode. Therefore bytecode speed and size are at odds with each other. This paper proposes a novel translation that significantly reduces the bytecode size without affecting the execution speed. The key insight is that larger value types (such as integers) can hold smaller ones (such as bytes) thus reducing the duplication necessary in heterogeneous translations. In our implementation, on the Scala compiler, we encode all primitive value types in long integers. The resulting bytecode approaches the performance of monomorphic code, matches the performance of the heterogeneous translation and obtains speedups of up to 22x over the homogeneous translation, all with modest increases in size.

HP-UX compilers inline mathematical functions for Itanium Processor Family (IPF) systems to improve throughput 4X-8X versus external library calls, achieving speeds comparable to highly tuned vector functions, without requiring the user to code for a vector interface and without sacrificing accuracy or edge-case behaviors. This paper highlights IPF architectural features that support implementation of high-performance, high-quality math functions for inlining. It discusses strategies for utilizing the features and developing inlineable sequences on a large scale, and it presents requisite compiler features and language extensions. Also, this paper describes compiler mechanisms that produce inlineable code and inline it.

Includes OCaml compiler augmented with prefetch intrinsics and associated memory-bound benchmarks. See readme.txt for further details.

This paper describes a just-in-time (JIT) Java1 compiler for the Intel® Itanium® processor. The Itanium processor is an example of an Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing (EPIC) architecture and thus relies on aggressive and expensive compiler optimizations for performance. Static compilers for Itanium use aggressive global scheduling algorithms to extract instruction-level parallelism. In a JIT compiler, however, the additional overhead of such expensive optimizations may offset any gains from the improved code.In this paper, we describe lightweight code generation techniques for generating efficient Itanium code. Our compiler relies on two basic methods to generate efficient code. First, the compiler uses inexpensive scheduling heuristics to model the Itanium microarchitecture. Second, the compiler uses the semantics of the Java virtual machine to extract instruction-level parallelism.

Concolic testing for functional languages

Chinese has the characteristics of a solitary language, where each monosyllabic word conveys a meaning, and every utterance is a word with more than one meaning. This is a culture that is sufficient without using alphabetic writing. Therefore, phonetic loan words with the same pronunciation or similar sound tags making the phonetic loan words are the inherited tradition of Chinese language culture. Sometimes, a written utterance could be taken from its meaning or its sound, such uncertainty allows a meaning to expand from its form, where the meaning could be interpreted by the context. In a phonetic loan word, the character is borrowed for the same sound and has nothing to do with the form. Interpretation of words such as these relies solely on the sound module. Those who are skilled in explaining words in ancient books understand the diachronic change and the different sounds between dialects. Therefore, rising above the phonetic loans has become an important method in interpretation. Taiwanese languages are derived from Chinese. Being so far away from the central plains of China, the languages of Taiwan have disconnected from the official language used in the central plains, and the phenomenon of phonetic loan words with the same pronunciation or similar sound tags making the phonetic loan words have become even more significant. For those who are used to the sounds and characters of the official language, it is more challenging in reading Taiwanese languages, given the inaccuracy of sounds and diversity of the language. That is why rising above the phonemic loans is an important guideline in interpreting kua-a-chheh (Taiwanese ballads). This study compiles all the ”Pian-Yi-Zi” in five kua-a-chhehs from south and north of Taiwan, and discusses the following eight phenomenon, including ”dialectal accent”, ”change of words”, ”the confusion between similar sounds”, ”the combination of sounds”, ”borrowing of forms”, ”word-formation from the six categories of Chinese characters”, ”the influence of Japanese language”, and ”the shift of forms”. From my point of view, in combination with the foundation laid down by previous studies on Chinese classics and Dunhuang folk characters, it is hoped that kua-a-chheh can be interpreted correctly, while preserving such a language and culture.

Chapter 1 - SQL Is Declarative, Not Procedural